Jack in the Box

by John Weisman

  Myles blinked rapidly then put his hand out. “Good to meet you, Special Agent—”

  “Oh, let’s dispense with titles.” Sam took the man’s hand. It was moist and limp. Additional manifestations of Myles’s character and personality. “No need to be anything other than informal. Sun’s over the yardarm, Mr. Myles.”

  He put his hand in the small of Myles’s back and nudged him toward the rear booth where John Forbes was waiting. “John Forbes, Mr. Myles.”

  Forbes let his jacket fall open so Myles could catch a glimpse of the big Glock. 40-caliber pistol on his hip as he rose and extended his hand. The FBI man smiled invitingly. “Thanks for coming, Mr. Myles. I know this is an imposition.”

  “Not at all.” Self-consciously, Myles fingered the State Department ID, which was stuffed into the breast pocket of his shirt. “Happy to help. You said something about laptop security?”

  “Let’s get comfortable.” Forbes ushered Myles to the inside of the booth, then sat next to him, pinning the man next to the wall. “Can we buy you a drink?”

  Myles loosened his tie. “You know, that sounds good.” He looked up at Sam. “Rye and ginger, please.”

  “Gotcha.” Sam headed for the bar. Three minutes later he was back, holding two pints of Guinness and a big highball glass. He’d had the bartender pour Myles a triple.

  Forbes was still appearing to make nothing but small talk. But in fact, the FBI agent was eliciting information in the subtle way experienced interrogators do. He also was checking the pace and manner of Myles’s responses; noting the man’s breathing and eye-movement patterns; watching how Myles shifted his body in response to certain questions; listening carefully to his vocabulary and phrasing. Unlike so many of his peers at the Bureau, Forbes was a gifted interrogator: patient, incisive, and flexible; a talented role-player who was able to assume the characteristics demanded by the situation.

  What he was doing now was evaluating Myles through the use of nonthreatening conversation, much in the same way a good polygraph operator asks a series of bland control questions in order to develop the baseline against which to measure all the subject’s later responses. Forbes, however, didn’t need to hook Myles up to any box. The graph paper was already running inside the G-man’s head.

  Sam set the drinks down and slid Myles’s highball across the table. He watched as the man took the glass in both hands and sipped, reacted to the strength of the drink, and then took three big swallows, finishing half of it.

  Sam’s eyebrows flicked. Forbes’s head reacted imperceptibly. They’d wait and let the alcohol do its work before they began their own.

  6:14P.M. Sam caught Forbes’s expression and knew it was time to strike. He dropped a heavy brown envelope with a Department of Justice return address imprinted in the upper-left-hand corner onto the table. “Mr. Myles, we think you should look at these,” Sam said. “They’ll give you some idea of what we’d like to cover this evening.”

  He slid the envelope under Myles’s nose and nonchalantly sipped his Guinness while the man opened the flap and pulled a manila folder out.

  They’d war-gamed this stage of things for the greatest shock value. So, the first picture was the one of Myles accepting a wad of cash. The second was a copy of the receipt—in Cyrillic—with Myles’s thumbprint clearly visible, and circled in red. The third was the FBI fingerprint card that had been taken during Myles’s security check for his SECRET clearance. Underneath those, were half a dozen of the SECRET documents Myles had passed to his handlers, all of them annotated in Cyrillic. Under those, Forbes had inserted a dozen gruesome five-by-seven crime-scene photographs he’d pulled from his home files.

  Myles started to shake. He tried to stand up but Forbes put a hand on his shoulder and pressed him back onto the leather banquette. “No-no-no-no-no,” Forbes said. “We’re just getting acquainted.” Quickly, he slid everything but the crime-scene pictures back into the folder, slid the folder into the envelope, and passed the envelope to Sam, who dropped it out of sight.

  Then Forbes put his arm around Myles’s quivering shoulder. “Vern,” he said, “we know you’ve been passing materials to the Russians. But that’s not why we’re here. We’re here because we think you are in danger.”

  “Danger?”

  “The photographs,” Sam said. “Remember that Senate aide who committed suicide three months ago?”

  Myles’s eyes went wide. “John Willis?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Willis, a former CIA case officer, had been a high-ranking staffer at the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The way the Washington Post had told the story, he’d been accused by several congressmen of leaking derogatory stories to the press, and was abruptly fired by the committee chairman at the behest of CIA Director Nick Becker. According to the newspaper accounts, the following morning a depressed Willis had taken a shotgun from his home, checked into the Wolf Trap Motel, and blown his brains out.

  Sam slid a photograph under Myles’s nose. “That’s Willis.” He watched the man’s reaction. “Or at least it was. And we know it wasn’t suicide.”

  “How?” Myles was simultaneously repulsed and fascinated by the photograph. He couldn’t take his eyes off of it. “How do you know?”

  Sam slid a second crime-scene photo in front of Myles. “John Willis put the muzzle of the shotgun in his mouth, then reached down and pushed the trigger.”

  “Which,” Forbes continued, “sent twenty-seven pellets of number four buckshot from a two-and-three-quarter-inch Federal hunting load down the thirty-inch barrel of a Browning twelve-gauge semiautomatic shotgun, blowing the back of his head clean off.” He pointed at the photo Sam had just placed in front of Myles. “Messy, huh? You can see his brains all over the wall.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Except there was one slight discrepancy,” Sam said.

  Myles started to sweat. He wiped at his brow. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Forbes slid out of the booth. “C’mon,” he said, taking hold of Myles’s arm firmly. “We’ll get some cold water on your face.”

  When they’d returned, some minutes later, Sam was waiting with a fresh round of drinks.

  “Take a sip,” he urged, looking at Myles’s ashen face. “You’ll feel better.”

  Myles smelled of vomit, bile, and sweat. He complied meekly. He put the glass back onto its cocktail napkin and swiveled toward Forbes. “How did you know it wasn’t suicide?”

  Forbes riffled through the crime-scene photos until he found the one he wanted. “Willis put the barrel of the shotgun in his mouth and pushed the trigger with his thumb. See?”

  Myles snuck a look at the photograph, then quickly swallowed some of his drink. “Uh-huh.”

  “Look again. Look at the barrel.”

  Myles forced himself to focus on the grisly photo. “I see it.”

  “The barrel on this shotgun was thirty inches long. The trigger is positioned seven inches behind where the chamber—that’s the end of the barrel that holds the shell—fits into the receiver.”

  Myles’s expression told Sam he wasn’t getting it, so Sam pointed to the corpse in the photo. “Willis’s arms weren’t long enough for him to be able to reach the trigger with the muzzle of the shotgun in his mouth. He would have had to fire the weapon with a toe.”

  “And as you can see”—Forbes jumped in—“he’s wearing his shoes.”

  “But the newspapers …”

  “The newspapers printed what we told them.” Sam scooped the photos up before Myles could examine any more of them. He slid all but one into the envelope. “We’re the government, Vern. We run black ops.”

  “We gave the press that cover story to gain us time,” Forbes said. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Because the Russians killed Willis.”

  “The Russians?” Myles’s face went white.

  Sam picked up the thread. “You know President Putin’s allied himself with the United States in the war against
terror. Russia even supported the United States in the Security Council to allow the president to use force in Iraq. Vladimir Putin doesn’t want us to discover any evidence that he’s been spying on us all along. So he ordered Moscow Center to temporarily close down all their American networks.” Sam tapped the heavy envelope. “This is how they’re doing it.”

  “You’re in danger,” Forbes said. He put his arm around Myles’s shoulder. “Look, guy, we know what you’ve been doing. If you help us now, we’ll keep you safe. If you don’t want to cooperate, that’s fine. We’ll do the formal number. The whole nine yards. You’ll be charged. You’ll do the perp walk into Federal Court—orange jumpsuit, bulletproof vest, U.S. marshals, shackles round your wrists and ankles. Oh—and lots of TV cameras. Remember the chaos when Hanssen was charged? TV news loves spy cases, Vern. So people will see your face, over and over and over. How many times did you see that horsey smile of Bobby Hanssen’s? A thousand times? More? You’ll get the same treatment.”

  “Then we’ll make sure you’re released on bond,” Sam said. “After all, you’re only small fry.”

  Forbes picked up the cue. “Oh, the Russians will love that, Vern.” The G-man tapped the picture of John Willis’s corpse. “The Russians want you out on the street, where they can reach out and touch you.” He slid the picture of Willis’s corpse under Myles’s nose.

  “We know you run a safe house for them. We know you pass the occasional document.”

  Sam looked at the pitiful bureaucrat. It was all so clear now. SCEPTRE and SCARAB were indeed cryptonyms for two highly placed Moscow Center agents. Ed Howard said SCARAB had a safe house where he had his face-to-face meetings with his Russian control agent. He also said that SCARAB had been invited to an elite reception held at the State Department in honor of visiting KGB Chairman Yevgeniy Primakov.

  Howard had either lied—or he’d misspoke. Vern Myles ran the safe house. But Myles wasn’t SCARAB. No way. And Sam was certain he wasn’t SCEPTRE either. No: Vern Myles was another in a long line of disposables.

  Charlotte had pointed it out on the link diagram. Howard insisted that SCARAB had shaken hands with Primakov. The defector had even claimed that a Russian control officer brush-passed his valuable agent something at the State Department reception. He’d tried to cover his tracks afterward when Sam had caught him in an inconsistency.

  No—that wasn’t what Howard had said. Howard had said that SCARAB’s control officer had passed the American traitor something right under the nose of the secretary of state. Sam had simply assumed the control officer was Russian—part of Primakov’s entourage. Now, sitting in the bar, he realized the assumption could have been a false one.

  He turned his attention back to Myles, who was in an utter state of panic. Good. Sam took his time, reached leisurely for his Guinness, and sipped. He looked at his target, his expression compassionate. “We need details, Vern. Your contact procedure. Your signal sites. Your mailbox locations. Your break-off sequences. Help us, and you’ll survive. Hold back, and—” Sam used the pint glass to point to the photograph.

  Myles’s eyelids fluttered. He started to say something, thought better of it, then took his drink in both hands and drained it.

  Forbes inclined the rim of his Guinness in Myles’s direction. “Live or die, boyo. Choice is yours.”

  Myles, having finished his drink, began to chew the ice cubes. He’d started to sweat again. “What do you people want?”

  Sam could smell the man’s fear. “Everything,” Sam said, his face passive. “But not here. We’ll talk in the car.”

  “Are you taking me to jail?”

  Forbes shook his head. “We’re going somewhere we can talk.” Using the Miller documents, Sam had already rented a motel room in Ballston. Forbes would do the questioning there.

  First he’d shake Myles’s equilibrium by catching him in small contradictions. Then he’d take him back over the material three, four, five times, emphasizing the dire consequences of every minuscule inconsistency. He’d tell Myles jailhouse horror stories about rape and murder. He’d play Myles’s emotions like a goddamn Stradivarius. Oh, Forbes was a frigging virtuoso of interrogation. A Heifitz who would threaten, coax, and cajole until Myles was pliable as putty; a merry fiddler who’d vary the tempo and the intensity of his questions to knock Myles off balance.

  He’d manipulate, control, and dominate the situation until Myles would literally beg to confess his sins. And then he’d squeeze the son of a bitch dry. He’d be spy dust.

  But Forbes would do it all on his own. Sam had other work to do tonight.

  CHAPTER 29

  8:46 P.M. Sam pushed through the C Street staff-only door of the Hart Senate Office Building. He was, he estimated grimly, either committing or about to commit half a dozen Class-? felonies. Not that the thought made him uneasy. Committing felonies was something case officers did as a matter of course. In fact, case officers who weren’t committing felonies weren’t doing their jobs properly. Sam had broken the criminal laws of Germany, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Russia during his CIA career. But he’d never violated U.S. criminal statutes. Until now. Tonight he was running the same sort of B&E op against his own government that he’d conducted in Bonn, Paris, Moscow, and elsewhere.

  Forbes had warned that operating alone would get him busted. Sam was about to find out whether or not the G-man was correct. There’d been no problems during his approach, even though all the Senate office buildings were ringed in Jersey barriers and traffic was rerouted. In fact, the entire Capitol complex was inside a vehicle-free cordon sanitaire, even though Congress had left for its Thanksgiving recess. As he walked south from Union Station, Sam felt as if he were entering a ghost town.

  BOGUS FBI CREDENTIAL in his hand, Sam walked up to the barricade, which was manned by a single, bored Capitol police sergeant sitting on a steel chair on the far side of the metal detector. The nameplate on his uniform saidN. LATTIG and below it,PA.

  Sam brandished the shield. “Busy night, Sergeant Lattig?”

  The burly cop looked up from his newspaper. “As you can see, I’m turning ‘em away in droves.”

  Sam stood an arm’s length away from the barrier. He held the ID next to his face so Lattig could compare the picture and see the shield up close. “Got a meeting upstairs.”

  “Lucky you.” The sergeant beckoned him forward, never even bothering to stand. “C’mon through.”

  Sam pocketed his ID as he walked through the metal detector, setting it off. The cop didn’t look up from the paper.

  There was a gas mask hanging from the underside of the barricade. Sam said, “I see they finally got you guys some protection against anthrax.”

  Lattig snorted derisively. “Yeah—right. Lotta good it’ll do me, too, without the rest of the chemical suit.” He refolded the newspaper so he could read the next page. “Have a good one, bud.”

  “Thanks. You stay safe.”

  Rubber soles silent on the stone floor, Sam made his way down one long corridor, turned left, and headed for the closest bank of elevators so he could go up to the Hart’s huge atrium lobby and get his bearings. Frankly, he had no idea where in the huge office building he was.

  There were three Capitol police officers waiting to climb on as Sam exited. He nodded at them, walked into the atrium, peered up into the balconied tiers, saw where he had to go, headed for the closest stairway, and scampered up to the second floor.

  He emerged onto a carpeted walkway that overlooked the lobby, made his way to a set of double fire doors, pushed them open, and continued down a deserted, marble-floored corridor that led to the SSCI offices.

  8:51P.M. Sam stood in front of Hart 211. He put his earto the door and listened, but could detect no sound. He tried to peer under the door. So far as he could tell, there were no lights either. He reached into his trouser pocket and retrieved the index card on which he had written the cipher-lock combinations he’d copied from Red Jacket’s wallet. He squinted at his w
riting, punched 4-2-4-2-8 into the lock set, and turned the knurled steel handle.

  The cipher lock eased open. Sam pulled on a tight-fitting pair of latex gloves, reached down, turned the big flat doorknob, and pressed inward.

  The door didn’t budge. The goddamn door was double-locked. Then the cipher-lock timer expired, and the bolt shut with such a loud sound Sam grew wary. This was going to be no fun at all.

  He pulled the latex gloves off and stuffed them in the breast pocket of his suit coat. From his trouser pocket, Sam extracted what appeared to be an ordinary pocketknife. But instead of blades, there were six two-and-a-quarter-inch picks. A long, thin torque wrench was concealed in the dark handle.

  8:51:46. Sam tried one pick after another until he found the one that worked most easily against the lock’s tumbler pins. The secret was not to apply too much pressure because the tumbler pins would bind under tension. When he had the pick up against the first of the pins, he inserted the torque wrench into the keyhole. The wrench would apply pressure to the pins and hold them in position once the pick had done its work.

  8:51:55. Sam’s ears pricked up at the sound of footsteps echoing off the marble corridor. They were coming from somewhere to his left. Then he heard indistinct voices. Sam pulled the pick and wrench out of the lock and dropped them into his jacket. He wheeled and moved rapidly away from the sound, going back the way he’d come, searching for someplace to hide.

  8:52:09. He passed a stairwell but decided against it. Just beyond, there was a restroom. He eased the door open, listening as the footfalls grew louder behind him The lights had been turned out. Sam flipped them on and went inside, found a stall, entered it, then sat on the commode, trying to slow his heartbeat and modulate his breathing.

  He forced himself to sit for a full two and a half minutes, staring at the second hand on his wristwatch. Then he stood, walked to the sink, washed his hands, dried them, cautiously eased the bathroom door open, and stuck his head into the corridor, senses keened. The corridor was empty. He heard nothing.