Top Hook

by Gordon Kent

  Sally Baranowski smiled. “I wasn’t asleep.” She knew he was checking to see how sober she was, and the fact was that she was as sober as he, maybe more so.

  Dukas was thinking that she looked a lot better than he remembered—nice smile, nice face despite the lines that anxiety and a sense of failure had scratched there. He led the way to Abe’s study and sat her down in a chair where he could see her in the desk light. Bea brought in coffee for both of them and left after telling Mike that he had no consideration for other people and was he planning to spend the night, and if so would he please use the living-room sofa because Sally was in the guest room, and he was welcome to stay but he sure didn’t have any consideration.

  “Thanks, Bea.”

  “Huh.”

  Dukas and Sally Baranowski faced each other. Dukas figured they were thinking the same thing because they came from the same world: he had set it up like an interrogation. It was no surprise when she said, “So what is it you want to know?”

  “George Shreed.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You were right—it looks like he’s out the door. What I want to know is, where would he go?”

  She laughed. “The world’s a big place. George is a smart man. Experienced. Where wouldn’t he go?”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m asking you to do me a miracle. Find him for me.”

  She shook her head. Her smile became rueful, and he thought she must have seen that smile in the mirror a lot in recent years. She was a vulnerable woman, perhaps most vulnerable of all to her own demands on herself. “You worked for him,” he said gently. “You must have known a lot about where he went, what he did. Operations he designed. People he met. Just think back—any time he ever did any of those things differently? Any time he ever said anything funny? Any time you thought, this is a little peculiar?”

  She looked off into a dark corner. The smile vanished, replaced by a frown. “Binary Conquest,” she murmured. She turned back to him and the smile came back. “That was an operation. Actually a type of operation. George was a great believer in doubles, turning agents and guessing they’d be turned back, playing all sorts of mind games. Then he’d try to turn the control who was running the double. It was like Alice in Wonderland. Other people in Ops Plans didn’t get it, didn’t agree, but George really pursued it.”

  “That was peculiar?”

  “No. It was just George. Being a hardnose.”

  “What else?”

  She rambled, not from any mental laxness but from a deliberate randomness, trying to let her brain relax so the past would talk to her. She gave him a few ideas, but nothing solid. Finally, Dukas said, “China?”

  “George hated China. Really hated it. In off moments, when he wasn’t being official, you know? he’d say things like, ‘We have to have a war with China,’ or ‘It’s the Chinese, stupid!’”

  “Would he run to China?”

  “God, what a thought!”

  “He could just have been a very good actor.”

  She shook her head. “George was no actor. What he hated, what he loved, was right on the surface. Oh, he’d been a really good case officer, and I suppose he did what we all have to do, trick the agent, lie, manipulate, all that—but when you knew him, you could see what he felt. I got to know his wife a little. Nice woman, the love of his life. She said it, too—‘George just hates China.’” She frowned.

  “What is it?”

  “I just remembered. ‘Chinese Checkers.’” She swung her face to him, half in shadow now. “It was a name he gave to one part of Binary Conquest. I remember thinking it was such a funny name for him to pick.”

  “Kid’s game.”

  “Yeah, exactly, but ‘Chinese’? Just odd, for him. And—”

  “What?”

  “I’d forgotten it. Chinese Checkers didn’t work—maybe that’s why he used that name. It was three operations that kind of got buried. You know, swept under the rug? Don’t know why, it just did—I suppose George decided they were no good.”

  “What were they?”

  “Oh, just three operations he set up and then didn’t run. You know, like you do—comm plans and all that, but we never designated an officer, so they never got implemented.”

  “What, this was just pie in the sky?”

  “No, they were real enough; they just never got implemented. How did that go? George did those himself…” Her voice trailed off. She was looking into the dark again. “Christ,” she murmured, “what a perfect way to meet somebody.” She looked at Dukas. “He laid out the routes himself; he said he liked to keep his hand in. Jesus, if you were going to meet somebody on the sly, what a great way to do it.” Her eyes were open a little wider, excited. “Have I remembered something, or what?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Well, no, I mean—George wouldn’t let you into that part of himself; he’d say ‘I’m going to retrace my past,’ meaning when he was an ops officer in the field. And you’d let him, because it was private and it was kind of touching, this handicapped guy who had been a station chief and all that, reliving the old days.” She paused. The frown came back. “‘For a rainy day.’”

  “What?”

  “What he said about Chinese Checkers when I asked him once. It was after we kind of had a falling-out. I was still working for him, but there was a lot of tension between us because I wouldn’t go along with him on something—the Alan Craik business, in fact—and I was questioning some of the things he did, and I know now he’d already decided to fire me. But I asked him one day about Chinese Checkers, which was still in the files and never been implemented, and I was being a smartass and I said something like, ‘Why are we keeping this dead shit around?’ and he goes, ‘For a rainy day.’” She stared at Dukas, then shook her head as if to clear it. “It’s raining.”

  Dukas got it. They talked some more, with Dukas trying to find other anomalies in her memories of Shreed, but she kept coming back to the same thing. Finally, she jumped up. “I’m going in to my office.”

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “There’s always people there. I’ve got to know. If I remember it right, and if Chinese Checkers is still alive—well, it’s all I can give you. The best I can do.”

  Dukas told her she didn’t have to, and he told her it wasn’t wise to go driving around the Peretzes’ neighborhood at that hour, but by that time they were moving toward the door and she was putting a coat on. Dukas grabbed a raincoat he hoped was Abe’s and put it on over the sweatshirt, and too late he remembered he was wearing sandals that weren’t even his.

  USS Thomas Jefferson 0400 GMT (0700L) Sunday.

  Rafe grabbed him in a brief hug as he came off the flight deck and on the catwalk and then led him down through the watertight door and into the passageway that led to the blue-tile spaces, the admiral’s kingdom.

  “Give me a sec,” Alan called over his shoulder, and he bolted into the men’s head on the O-3 level just short of the blue tile. Rafe waited until he emerged.

  “We got screwed.” Rafe was still on. He still looked completely in control, and if he was bitter or angry, it didn’t show except around the bottom of his mouth when he smiled. He kept flexing his right hand, though, and Alan could guess what that meant.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I know that our orders came all the way from the CNO. Admiral wants to see us.”

  “I can’t see how that’s going to be good.”

  “Come on, Al. We’re seniors, now. We aren’t going to get put in hack.” They exchanged a glance.

  “I can’t imagine anything better right now than a week in hack. Just wake me up when it’s over.”

  Still burdened with flight gear, they passed Rafe’s office and the Combat Information Center and went straight to the admiral’s briefing room at frame 133.

  The flag captain greeted them at the door and ushered them in.

  “He’ll be with you in a moment. He’s using the flag channel to t
alk to DC. He’s pretty pissed, but you guys aren’t the target, so keep it calm, okay? We’re on the same side here.”

  Alan, who had never had a pre-meeting apology from a flag captain, began to wonder what the hell was going on. Rafe simply picked up a copy of Aviation Week and started leafing through it. A moment later, a steward poked his head around the corner from the passageway and then pushed through the door with a tray of the Jefferson’s chocolate chip cookies and coffee.

  Alan poured coffee for both of them and smiled a little, thinking of the number of times that he’d done this for Rafe in the air. The cookies were still good, and they wolfed them like kids.

  “Let me do the talking, Al,” Rafe murmured, dusting crumbs off his chin.

  “You’re the boss.” In the next room, the Flag TAO was bellowing at someone. His intensity was audible but his words were lost in the rumble of the Jefferson’s speed.

  When the admiral entered the room, they both snapped to their feet. They were surprised by the warmth of his first remark. “As you were. You guys must be beat.”

  “Yes, sir.” Rafe brushed his hand through his hair and then down the front of his flight gear.

  “What gets said here doesn’t leave this space, got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We got fucked, gentlemen. The CNO scrubbed the mission because the Navy’s plans and codes may be compromised.”

  Rafe went rigid by Alan’s side. He leaned forward a little and spoke very quietly.

  “Sir, I could have lost planes out there. We could have talked in the clear and still beat them. They would have turned away. Nobody would have fired.”

  “Captain Rafehausen, that may be the case, but it wasn’t your call, and it wasn’t mine. The CNO has another battle group in the Taiwan Strait, and it’s within easy strike range of the Chinese coast. He was not willing to risk an engagement that might have been used as a provocation. That’s just about a quote.”

  “How’d our codes get compromised, sir?” Alan could see the strategic implications already.

  “That’s why you’re standing here, Commander. A senior CIA officer has defected to China. There’s a chance he hasn’t reached there yet, but the CNO didn’t know that two hours ago. Familiar to you, Craik?”

  “Sir, I’m afraid I don’t—”

  “The name George Shreed mean anything to you?”

  “My God.”

  “He’s bolted. He had unlimited access, and we’re starting a worldwide rekey of all our crypto. That will take almost thirty-six hours; almost right up to the Chinese ultimatum, in fact. We have no idea what else he took with him. Don’t you have a meeting in Bahrain about this, Commander?”

  “Yes, sir.” Alan thought for a moment. “But if we know that Shreed’s the traitor, I’m not sure what my meeting in Bahrain is about.”

  “Find out. That just became your number-one priority.

  In fact, it just became my number-one priority. I have a request from NCIS to get you a million dollars in cash. We’ve just about got that. I’m thinking of sending Captain Rafehausen to fly you there because he’s got the weight of rank and he knows what’s going on.”

  Alan spoke. “Rafe’s the CAG. If the worst happens, and you have to fight—” What Alan was thinking, however, was that this might be the chance that Stevens had asked for.

  Rafe was shaking his head. “I’ll go if you tell me to, sir. But this is Craik’s game, and he doesn’t need a baby-sitter. I don’t need to drive his air taxi, either.”

  “I’m not positive that a baby-sitter isn’t exactly what Mister Craik needs, but I’ll wait on events. Okay, Mister Craik. You take a det plane and a crew of your choice and a million of my dollars, for which you will sign your life away. If you can do anything to get this bastard, you do it. Shoot the mother. I’m writing you orders with about fifteen vias, so if you need to go anywhere, then gas the plane and go, or take commercial aviation, or whatever. It’s authorized. How soon can you leave?”

  “The meeting is in a little less than twelve hours. It’s a seven-hour flight.”

  “Go sleep. By the time you wake up, it will be a six-hour flight. The Jefferson is driving you on the first part of the trip. Got to be the most expensive passenger trip of all time.”

  Langley.

  By two that morning, they knew that Chinese Checkers, despite Sally Baranowski’s memory of it as a live entity, had been canceled. Dead as a dud sitcom. Gone. All the file said was, “Delisted for causes of nonuse.”

  Sally was first flustered, then depressed. “I dragged you all the way out here for nothing. God, my memory—!” Her skin looked suddenly sallow and she seemed to sag. “It’s a big nothing.”

  “When was it canceled?”

  “Oh—let’s see—” She tapped some keys. “Hey! Last week!” She looked up at Dukas, her face suddenly hopeful. “Funny coincidence, huh?”

  “Even if it was canceled, could he still use it?”

  “He could use the comm plans and even the local contact agent if they hadn’t got around to paying him off, or if the local just went on walking the routes out of force of habit. That happens sometimes—you cut an agent loose and they’re almost homesick; they go on through the motions out of—nostalgia, I guess. So, yeah, he could use Chinese Checkers still. It’d be like a ready-made setup.”

  “But he never used it before that you know of.”

  “He never activated it. But I know he checked it out a couple of times; he even said so. Like he wanted people to know he was doing it.” She tapped the keys. “This is his open travel log—approved travel that would include his vacation stuff with Jane, meetings, conferences, like that. We all have one. See, he logged out to Pakistan in ninety-five; that’s a Chinese Checkers country. And he went to Indonesia in ninety-seven; that’s another one. The logging means that he had Agency permission and a country clearance; he was probably there for some other purpose, but he could have done a walk-through and contacted the local agent at each one. But the agent wouldn’t know if he did anything else; a local agent in an unactivated net is just a pass-through, a gofer. See, what Chinese Checkers was really for was to set up a small network that could go on at very short notice, with the one agent-in-place to do the legwork for an ops officer when he came online.” She stared at the screen. “But, Jesus—what a great way to make a meeting!”

  “If you were a spy, you mean.”

  She seemed awed by the implications. “But George Shreed—! He screwed up my life, and I hate his guts, but—Jesus, not George Shreed!” She looked up at him again. Her expression was more fear than anything. Dukas patted her shoulder, feeling the solidity of her body. Letting his hand rest there, he could feel a brassiere strap under her T-shirt, and even, he thought, a slight tremor. “You done good,” he said and patted her again. “Is there any way to get the comm plans, even though this scheme’s been canceled?”

  She shook her head; her hair brushed against his hand. “Gone. It may be somewhere in a computer, but not where I can get at it.”

  “Goddamit.” He said it so softly it was almost a sigh. “If he was using it to meet somebody, then it might be what he’d use now he’s running. Dammit! To come so close—”

  She logged off the computer and stood up. She was chewing her lip, and she stretched and yawned to cover what he knew was tension, probably the tension of withholding something from him. He watched her, both interested in that solid, slightly beefy body and repelled by the suspicion that she was hiding something. She dropped her arms and finished her yawn and they stood there. Her eyes flicked around the cluttered office; when they met his, they slid away again at once. He let the silence build and build.

  But she didn’t speak. She took his elbow and turned him toward the door and reached for the lights. “Time to go,” she said.

  Dukas had thought she would crack, and she hadn’t. He was sure there was more, and he had missed the moment to learn it.

  But outside in the parking lot, walking the quiet
early morning with nobody else in sight, she gave the moment back to him. She said, “There’s something I didn’t tell you.” She looked aside at him. “I’m paranoid; I thought, you know, they might have my office bugged.” She laughed, but not with humor. “You work here long enough, you think like that. Anyway—” She fetched a sigh, like a breath hard to draw and exhale. “I’ve got the Chinese Checkers files.”

  He hid his surge of excitement. “How come?”

  “When George canned me, I went sort of nuts. I thought of doing things—revenge, just plain small-minded meanness, a lawsuit—I didn’t know. I took some stuff—downloaded it on disks. Including Chinese Checkers.”

  “You were suspicious even then?”

  “No! I just—Hell, maybe I was. Jeez, I never thought of it that way.” She shook her head, and her hair swung around her shoulders. “I sure broke a couple of laws.”

  “Where’s the disk?”

  “In a bank. Mike, if this gets out, I’m toast.”

  “You’ll be okay.”

  “No, I mean it—the Agency has no mercy for people who snitch. Trust me: they’d go harder on me for downloading files and giving them to you than they will on George, if they catch him. George at least has something to trade—Christ, a lifetime of spying?” She laughed again. “They’ll give him a goddam golden parachute to tell them all about it! But me, I ain’t got nuthin’.”

  “Honesty doesn’t pay.”

  “Failure doesn’t pay. Anyway, Jesus—take care of me, will you?”

  He promised her secrecy: nobody would know where the Chinese Checkers file came from but him. He would make no copies. He wouldn’t testify about it in court.

  But he knew he would, if he got George Shreed.

  So did she.

  She held his arm for the last steps across the dark parking lot, the asphalt shining with rain-puddles under the lights. Dukas felt as he always did when he was compromising somebody—sending an agent into a tough place, offering a deal with a witness—protective and guilty. He squeezed her hand against his side.

  “Do you ever eat Italian food?” he said.