Top Hook

by Gordon Kent

  She was surprised. “I love it.”

  “I make a pretty good gnocchi. Butternut squash and mozzarella.” He cleared his throat. “Thought you might—I never had dinner last night, you know? My place is, um, sort of on the way to Abe’s.”

  She leaned against his car. “It’s after three in the morning. We’re talking breakfast, I think.”

  “Well—I got some Shredded Wheat.”

  She looked at him, perhaps puzzled, perhaps amused. “I think I better take a rain check.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  In the car, she was silent until they were out on the highway, and then she said, “I really meant it about the rain check. Why don’t I bring you the disks tomorrow—today, I guess I mean. Then maybe—”

  He thought that sounded pretty good. He felt a twinge of guilt about Emma, because he knew exactly what he and Sally Baranowski were planning, but he was realist enough to know that Emma was sliding away from him, although he didn’t yet know why.

  He called his old war crimes unit in Bosnia from his apartment. It was after ten in the morning there, and his French friend and second-in-command Pigoreau sounded almost chipper despite his cigarette rasp.

  “Mike! When are you coming back, amigo?”

  Dukas growled a sarcastic reply. His own voice was hoarse with fatigue. “Pig, I got a favor.”

  “For you, anything. Well, almost anything. When are you coming back to us?”

  “I got a headache here, Pig. Then if I’m lucky, The Hague. Listen, we used to have a couple mujaheddin who owed us one.”

  “You mean, who were terrified of us. Yes?”

  “Find one who’s married a Bosnian woman, better yet got a couple of kids. Then tell him he wins big points with us for spreading news of a dangerous criminal who’s responsible for the murder of an Iranian Muslim who was serving Islam undercover in Africa. Okay?”

  Pigoreau laughed. “Mike, what are you cooking?”

  Not gnocchi for Sally Baranowski, he thought. “I need to get the word out fast. See, it’s like this, Pig—” He tried to tell Pigoreau only enough. “There’s a guy’s on the run, maybe he’s heading for Iran. I think he’s going to go through Islamic countries to get there. Maybe somebody’ll see him, you know?”

  “Mike! A needle in a—I don’t know the word—”

  “Haystack, we say. Yeah, but I’m desperate.”

  “This is for the beautiful Rose?”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “She called me, Mike. To find you, couple of weeks ago. A beautiful voice—”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Of course, but you know, one man—do you know where he’s going, his route—?”

  “I know that he walks with two steel canes and is pretty much busted up from the waist down.”

  “Ah.” He heard Pigoreau chuckle. “That is a different business. Bien sûr, finding a cripple makes it just possible. Of course, maybe he is in a wheelchair, or a golfing car, or—”

  “I’ll e-mail you a photo.”

  “You got a name?”

  “George Shreed—S-H-R-E-E-D. Tell the mujaheddin he’s a dangerous war criminal.”

  “Is he?”

  “I say he is, and I’m still on the roster as the head of the unit.”

  “Very good.”

  “Implicated in the death of Ben Ali Houssan, a.k.a. ‘Franci,’ in Mombasa, Kenya, 1991. Franci supposedly was a suicide, but in fact he was shot twice in the back of the head.”

  “By this Shreed?”

  “Don’t put it like that, Pig. Just connect his name with it and say that’s why we want him. Reward of ten thousand dollars.” And that will just about clean Mike Dukas out of money, he thought. “If our guy spreads the word and we get confirmation from at least two other countries that the photo and the wanted posting have got there, he gets a thousand bucks and indemnity in Bosnia.” And that really will clean me out.

  Pigoreau whistled. “It’s a good thing I trust you, Mike.”

  “You got a problem with this, Pig?”

  Pigoreau did not. For him as for Dukas, the law was a goddess whom you had sometimes to worship, sometimes take into your hands.

  “You’re a copain, Pig.”

  Dukas hung up and sat hunched over on his bed. In fact, he hated cutting corners on the law. Those were the wrongs that filled his thoughts when he couldn’t sleep. Maybe they were the things that kept him awake in the first place.

  He sent the photo and fell into bed and, despite his guilts and regrets, fell instantly asleep.

  26

  Nicosia, Cyprus.

  George Shreed had limped right through the lobby of the first-class hotel where Israeli intelligence had reserved a room for him, leaving his luggage with a porter at the desk and seeming to head for a men’s room that was hidden from the public around two corners and down a flight of carpeted steps. At the bottom of the steps, he had turned left instead of right as the discreet sign had directed him, and then he had picked his way to the hotel kitchen and out the back door, and by the time his trackers got there, he was gone. He got himself a room in the old Greek quarter and hired two off-duty Turkish cops to cover his back, and then he set up a meeting with the Israeli intelligence people who were supposed to have been on his tail the whole time.

  He met Lieutenant-Colonel Begin of the Mossad in a café. Shreed’s bodyguards sat at tables behind and on each side of him; Begin’s people sat toward the street. The off-duty cops looked at Shreed; the Israeli muscle looked up and down the street.

  “This is quite unnecessary,” Lieutenant-Colonel Begin said, waving a hand at the two Turks.

  “A matter of point of view.” Shreed flashed a grim smile. His legs were aching because his morphine was running low.

  “You are making it tough for us to like you,” Begin said. “You want to make a deal, and you act like we’re thieves.”

  “I act as if you’re Israeli intelligence agents, you mean. I don’t want to get snatched off the streets of Nicosia and flown to Tel Aviv in a mailbag. I want to sit here like a civilized defector and make a deal.”

  “What have you got to deal with?”

  Shreed managed a laugh. “You know who I am, Colonel.”

  Begin was lounging back in his chair, his crotch rather aggressively pointed at Shreed. He had a brute’s face and a soccer yob’s haircut, and his body was thick and hard. He looked like a man who was not opposed to the idea of violence as a legitimate form of persuasion. He drummed his fingers on the metal table. “Why are you doing this?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  Begin turned to one of the men behind him, exchanged a look with him. He turned back to Shreed. “What do you want?”

  “New identity—lifetime. A house. A pension. Protection.”

  Begin’s body heaved once with a laugh. “Why us?”

  “Because you love American secrets.”

  Begin rapped twice on the table and pulled his legs in, coiled his body and stood. “I’ll get back to you,” he said.

  “You have twenty-four hours.”

  “And then?” Begin gave him a nasty smile.

  Shreed shrugged. “Iraq? Iran?” He shrugged again.

  Begin looked at him now without smiling. He looked at Shreed’s two off-duty cops and gave one contemptuous snort, then signaled his own men and strode out of the café.

  Shreed sat on, drinking coffee. He agreed with Begin about the two off-duty cops, and that realization caused a gulf to open: the sense of displacement of the man who has put everything familiar behind him. For the first time since he had fled Washington, he felt the vacuum of isolation and the fear of being forever outside. If he didn’t get protection from Israel, where would he go? He shuddered and tried to think of where he could buy morphine.

  I’m so lonely, baby

  I’m so lonely I could die…

  Washington.

  Dukas was in his office before eight, grainy-eyed and worn-looking but awake. H
e had brought two of the largest containers of coffee that a fast-food swill-shop could sell him, along with four glazed and fried things that were called doughnuts but looked more like halfcollapsed hassocks. He went through his phone messages and found nothing of immediate concern.

  Nothing had broken overnight. If Shreed had really fled, he had now been gone for more than twenty-four hours—enough of a lead to place him anywhere in the world. Dukas refused to think about a safe George Shreed, a George Shreed who was smiling somewhere while his Chinese control patted his back and told him how welcome he was in the People’s Republic.

  “You sonofabitch,” he said out loud.

  He was munching on the third hassock when Menzes called.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he shouted.

  “I’ve been here, Carl. Here and on the way here. Give me a break.”

  “I won’t give you a break! You’ve blown an investigation that took years, and I’m going to ream your ass!”

  “Carl, what the hell—?”

  “Your goddam Siciliano’s lawyer has fucked me over, and it’s your goddam fault!” Menzes was really shouting now. There could be no doubt that the rage was real. Dukas listened to it—the second time he’d let Menzes read him out in twenty-four hours—and waited until it had run down, and then he said, “I don’t get it, Carl. What’s going on?”

  “Like hell you don’t get it! You told that bull-dyke lawyer cunt about Shreed and she’s blown everything!”

  “Wait a minute! Carl, Jesus—what’s happened now?”

  “Don’t come the goddam innocent on me, Dukas! You knew it all along! You were conning me, you sonofabitch! You knew—you knew—!”

  “Knew what?”

  Menzes stopped. Dukas could hear him breathing. In a lower, dangerous voice Menzes said, “That cunt telephoned Shreed the day before yesterday and told him she was going to depose him under oath! She said ‘Top Hook’ to him! And yesterday she filed for a subpoena requiring George Shreed to appear before her to be deposed in the matter of Siciliano v. Central Intelligence Agency. How could you not know, as you’re fucking the bitch?”

  Then Dukas was angry. He was angry because Menzes knew about him and Emma, and angry about Emma herself and their relationship, because, yes, he had compromised something when he let her get close to him, and he was angry because Menzes had made him guilty. But what he said was, “Cut the insults, will you?”

  “If I could think of worse ones, I’d use them! If you were here, I’d punch your fucking nuts off.”

  “Carl, I swear I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Yes, I go to bed with Emma Pasternak; no, I don’t tell her about the case and I specifically walled her off from what I know about Shreed. I’m not shitting you: I don’t know what you’re talking about! How do you know Pasternak called Shreed?”

  Menzes was silent again, this time to get control of himself. He seemed calmer when he said, “Shreed’s receptionist logged the call. I talked to him two hours ago.”

  “How do you know what she said?”

  “We taped him, what d’you fucking think? You think we don’t tape CIA employees? Bullshit! Pasternak asked him if he’s Top Hook! Pasternak actually used the word ‘spy.’”

  “Oh, shit,” Dukas groaned. “Oh, shit! That’s why he ran!”

  “No kidding.” Menzes was sarcastic but less angry. “How could you not know that?”

  “I swear, I didn’t. Pasternak’s a fucking loose cannon. But how did she know? I never mentioned Top Hook to her, honest to God, Carl! I didn’t tell her any of it! Nothing!”

  “Then the Siciliano woman told her. I don’t frankly give a flying fuck; it came from your side, that’s all I need to know. You and your people blew my investigation!”

  “Your ‘investigation’ was sitting on its ass and had been for five years! You didn’t have zip until we came along!”

  “Don’t shout at me!”

  “Don’t you shout at me!”

  “Fuck you, I’d like to rip your tonsils out!”

  “Fuck you, too!”

  Then Dukas became aware that Triffler was standing in the doorway, a raincoat dangling from one arm. How long he had been there was unclear, but he looked startled. Dukas dropped the telephone back into its cradle. “Menzes,” he said. His face felt hot and he was breathing hard. He sat.

  “I was sure it was somebody you knew.” Triffler came closer. “I’m awfully glad I didn’t bring my kids in today to see where Daddy works.”

  Dukas put his head on one hand. “Dick, I’m very, very angry, and if you do anything to upset me, I’m going to kill you. Go away and do something for a while.”

  Then he sat there and thought over what Menzes had told him. He saw the chronology of it: Emma calling Shreed; Shreed panicking; Shreed fleeing. And doing it so quickly that it looked as if he really had initiated an escape plan, simply signaling his local contact that he had to be lifted out and then vanishing.

  Meaning that he really was in Beijing now, accepting the congratulations of his Chinese control.

  “Oh, shit!” Dukas threw a tray of files against the wall.

  He walked it backward from Emma’s call to Shreed. How had she learned about Top Hook? The answer lay in when: she would have used it pretty quickly after getting the information, he knew. So if she called Shreed day before yesterday, then she had known on Wednesday, maybe Tuesday at the earliest.

  And Tuesday night she had been with him.

  And Alan had called.

  And he had said that George Shreed had been Top Hook on the Midway.

  Jesus, he thought, she did get it from me. I just didn’t know she was getting it.

  And he didn’t need to examine the why of Emma’s call to Shreed, because he knew her well enough now to know that she would do anything for her client, including flushing an important spy to prove her client innocent.

  He woke Emma at her apartment, and she sounded cranky and croaky. “What do you want?” she said, as if Dukas was the last person who would ever have a reason to talk to her.

  “Did you call George Shreed and tell him that you were going to depose him and ask if he was a spy with the code name Top Hook?”

  Pause. Then: “What if I did?”

  “Did you get that information by eavesdropping while you were at my place?”

  “What if I did?”

  He exploded. “Jesus Christ, Em, don’t you know what you’ve done?”

  “I got my client off the hook, that’s what I did.”

  “You compromised this country’s security!”

  She laughed at that one. Then: “I thought getting Siciliano off was the most important thing in the world to you, Mike. You love her, right? You want her back on her career track, right?”

  “But, Jesus—Jesus, Em, to go behind my back—You used me.”

  She hooted. “Grow up.” She was right; he deserved that one.

  “You set Shreed off. He’s gone.”

  “That’s exactly what I wanted to happen. I’ve won!”

  “Won?”

  “Won Siciliano’s case, asshole. I’m a lawyer.”

  She had known they were going to have this conversation. Maybe she had even scripted it in her head, because she changed the tone. “Hey,” she said more gently, a smile in her voice now, “I didn’t hop into bed with you because I thought I’d get the dope on Shreed that way. I like you.” He was supposed to respond to that, he knew, but he couldn’t—not the way she wanted, anyway. He thought that if it had been her nighttime self, he might have made his peace with her, but in the light they were doomed.

  By then, she had figured it out, too. Her voice was wry. “Does this mean I won’t be sleeping over any more?” she said.

  Dukas hung up.

  He sat there for several minutes. When he had collected himself, he walked over and spoke to Triffler through the crates, his voice soft. “Dick, I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I was out of line. I apologize. Would you please get
Carl Menzes on the phone and—tell him I need to talk to him.” Dukas was afraid that if Menzes heard his voice first, he’d start hurling obscenities again.

  But Menzes had partly got over it, too. His voice was controlled—ungiving, angry, but restrained. Dukas told him that he had been right; that it had been he, Dukas, who had inadvertently tipped Emma Pasternak. “It’s all my fault,” he said.

  “Okay. I’m going to initiate a complaint, and NCIS can deal with you however they want. I’m going after Pasternak for violation of national security.”

  “I’ll testify.”

  “You’re goddam right you will.”

  Nicosia.

  The afternoon sky was bright but distant, only a narrow ceiling of hard blue above the brown streets where George Shreed hobbled. He had two wooden canes now, and, because they lacked supports for his forearms, he moved painfully. They were only old-fashioned wooden canes with bent handles, not really made for a man who had to swing most of his weight on them to move himself forward.

  The two rent-a-cops dawdled behind. They were bored with him and afraid of the Israelis. They wanted their day to be over; he had had to offer extra money to make them stay. For a little more, one of them had told him where he could buy morphine but had refused to get it for him. They were only a little better than nothing. He glanced back. They were too far behind him, he thought. The Israelis might try to snatch him right off the street, and those two might make sure that they trotted up too late.

  Or it could be the Chinese, if they had caught his use of the passport they had sent him. Or the Russians, if the word was out. Or his own agency.

  He was running out of time. He had disliked Lieutenant-Colonel Begin on sight, but he couldn’t let personal feelings get in the way now. He had to find a safe place.

  I’m so lonely, baby…

  A child appeared in front of him. He seemed to materialize there, brown face turned up as if seeking the sun, a shock of black hair falling over his forehead. Perhaps he was nine years old, and he had the face of a Turkish angel.

  “What you want, guy?” he said. “What you want? Woman?”