Patriot Act

by James Phelan

  He leaned over the side of the bed and got the cell phone out of his trouser pocket. He’d switched it to silent last night. One message.

  Listening, he went out of the bedroom to the kitchen, and made a call to the intelligence attaché at the French Consulate in New York.

  “Your man was killed, Major,” the consular official said. “Apparently he was shot by the FBI last night while—”

  “Do you have access to his office?” Secher asked.

  “Yes, Major, I am in here now,” he said. “The FBI said they would be back today with a warr—”

  “I want you to find the file on Lachlan Fox and fax it through to me at my hotel right now,” he said, checking his watch. “And then destroy that file straightaway.”

  Secher hung up the call and turned back to the bedroom, Kate walking out with nothing but a towel wrapped around her wet hair.

  “I was going to come back into bed,” she said.

  “Sorry, my sweet, something has come up,” Secher replied. “I have some business to take care of here. Can I meet you in New York this evening?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Secher walked up to her and took her hands in his.

  “You’ll be okay with this today, won’t you?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Just think. This business today will be the last thing I have to do before I sell out,” Secher said, smiling at the layered truth behind that line. “I’ll meet you in New York later today. Then, our lives start again. No worries, no pressures.”

  Kate nodded, and he kissed her on the cheek.

  “Do you have time for breakfast?” she asked.

  “No,” he told her, buttoning up his creased shirt from the bedroom floor. “I must get moving.”

  “Okay, I’ll leave with you,” Kate said, moving into her wardrobe and getting dressed.

  “Listen, I have a private jet booked for a four o’clock departure, leaving out of Dulles,” Secher said, buckling his belt. “You take it, as it’s already paid for. I’ll pick you up at your parents’ around eight.”

  “A private jet?” Kate said. “Sounds like you’re spending all the proceeds of your business sale before it’s even sold. Leaving nothing for us…”

  Secher recognised the humour in her tone and smiled along with her.

  They walked out of the door ten minutes later. Kate looked around her apartment for one last time. She was not coming back in here, ever.

  She closed the door behind her, rattling the knob as she always did to make sure it was locked, and the sound of the phone rang through the door. Kate looked to Secher and he checked his watch.

  “Get it if you want, I’m leaving.” He kissed her on the lips.

  “No, it’s okay,” she said, and hand-in-hand they walked down the hallway.

  97

  NEW YORK CITY

  In his office at GSR, Fox hung up the phone, deciding against leaving another message for Kate. It rang as soon as it was down in the cradle.

  “Lachlan Fox.”

  “Fox, Andrew Hutchinson,” he said. “I’m over here at the French Consulate, just stopped a consular secretary from incinerating some files.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Sit down for a sec,” Hutchinson said. He spoke for five minutes, telling Fox of the contents of the file, the surveillance notes, Kate. And love interest, a Christian Secher.

  “What does it say about Christian Secher?” Fox asked. He wrote down the name.

  “Nothing other than a note of his name. Who is he?”

  “Kate’s boyfriend, I guess,” Fox said.

  “Wait, there’s more.” Hutchinson was silent on the phone for a while then came back. “Seems your friend Secher is due to come to New York at some stage today.”

  “Would you get copies of all this to me? A fresh pair of eyes might see something you don’t,” Fox requested. “My file say much about Kate?”

  “Fair enough, I’ll get them over. And nope, I just read you everything in yours,” Hutchinson said. “Kate Matthews, on the other hand, has a file all of her own. Much thicker than yours.”

  “What?”

  Five minutes later, Fox leaned into the open doorway of Faith’s office, and knocked hard on the frame.

  “What the hell happened to you?” she asked.

  “This?” Fox looked at his reflection in the glass case of a framed print. The left side of his face was grazed and gauzed. “Rough night. Look, I need you to check some flight details for me.”

  “For?”

  “Kate Matthews.”

  “The other woman,” Faith said. “Okay, give me five.”

  98

  US ATLANTIC COAST

  The US Coast Guard was on full alert, every vessel afloat that had a sonar tasked with trawling for submarine activity in an operation that eclipsed any Homeland Security exercise ever performed.

  The cutter Tampawas sailing along the territorial water line, twenty-two kilometres east of New York City. For four hours she had been doing a search grid back and forth, her helicopter dipping active sonars into the water at random positions. For her part, Tampalaunched passive sonar pods into the water along a grid. Usually tasked with picking up drug runners on fast boats, the sonobuoys formed a giant net. If it made noise, they’d find it.

  Trouble was, the target they had been given the heads-up to look for wasn’t going to be making any noise.

  In the Combat Information Center, the officer on watch came over to check his chief sonarman’s assessment. Again the noise came over the speakers. Between them, he and the chief had over forty years at sea. And having done many ASW training exercises with the navy, they knew what a nuclear-powered submarine sounded like. But not particularly one driven by pump-jet propulsion.

  “That’s a surface vessel,” he said. “Cavitations are far too small.”

  “Well damn if we’re going to find an undetectable submarine using just passive sonar.”

  “What, are you thinking to catch them with reverberation from active sonobuoys?”

  “Close,” the chief said with a smile. “We know these waters better than anyone. The helo’s already set up the grid, how about we switch it all over to active and set it up as a net grid.”

  “Picking up anomalies in the seafloor on the screen,” the officer said, going along with the idea.

  “We’ll get an echo sounding of the sub if it’s down there,” the chief said. “We know this seafloor.”

  “Just like fishing.”

  99

  NEW YORK CITY

  Fox entered his office to find copies of the files sent over by Hutchinson. He closed the door, switched on a pot of coffee in the small kitchenette cupboard, and flicked on some background music.

  This file on Kate was far different to her personnel file from the Advocacy Center. It included a full report of her arrest, including a note that the federal prosecutor had pardoned her. No mention of the deal she cut, however. He flipped to the last pages, which were the up-to-date references.

  The murder of Cooper was noted there, and he flipped to the last entry and worked backwards through the pages. His affair with Kate was there, complete with some photos of them on his houseboat. Their arrival in New York. St Petersburg. Another page, and Fox froze. It was the note on her lover, Christian Secher, along with a photo of the pair together at a Washington café dated almost month ago.

  The report was prefaced with the directive coming from a General Danton of the French intelligence service, the DGSE. Seems they had an interest in this man. But the caption was what made Fox freeze.

  “Kate Matthews at café in Georgetown, Washington DC, with Major Christian Secher, DGSE case officer.”

  For a moment Fox’s world spun. He leaned up against a wall in his office, thinking hard.

  Christian Secher. Kate’s boyfriend. Works for French intelligence!

  Kate Matthews. Works for the Ad
vocacy Center…

  “… he’s Swiss…”she had said. She didn’t know.

  Or, did she?

  “… about to sell his business… we’re going to sail the world…”

  She was in Washington now. About to leave, with him. She was using Advocacy Center information to help him.

  “… that most powerful of weapons…”Lopin had said. “Information.”

  Information!

  Kate might be about to use the Advocacy Center’s information to start a new life, but she might not realise that she was playing a part in something so big.

  The photo of Secher on Fox’s desk triggered something. He flicked through some folders on his desk and stopped. What was it he was looking for? Seeing the photo of Secher upside-down generated a familiar image. A black and white photo that was seared in his mind. On a list of suspected and known DGSE agents, he flipped through some pages and stopped. The third photo down was of a Swiss national, and although it was a passport-quality photo dated 1984, there was no mistaking the image. The three lines of information on the man stated:

  “Alain Turenge, a known Swiss alias. This man is wanted in connection to theRainbow Warrior attack of 1985. Suspected as a French NOC agent working for DGSE.”

  There was no mistaking the face. Sure, twenty years younger, but it was him. Another shot showed the face of a known French agent exiting a car in Paris, dated January 1987, as hunted down by a New Zealand investigative journalist working on the case. Secher was standing by the man’s side.

  Alain Turenge wasChristian Secher. A major in the DGSE.

  Fox grabbed at the phone on his desk and dialled a number he’d written on a Post-it note by his computer. In five rings it was answered.

  “Colonel, it’s Lachlan Fox,” he said urgently.

  “Lachlan,” Dunn said over his cell phone. “I’m glad you called. Those transcripts you gave me were fakes. Good ones, looked like ours, but fakes.”

  “What? Look, I’ve got something for you, and I’d like to be kept in the loop in return,” Fox said.

  “Lachlan, you know I can’t let you in on—”

  “Your COMINT infrastructure may be under attack,” Fox said. “I don’t know how, but the attack at the Greenland base was part of it.”

  “How do you know—?”

  “There’s a French agent working a person inside the Advocacy Center,” Fox said. “I’ll give you a name and an alias, you’ll need to check if he’s come into the country.”

  “French agent?”

  “His cohort tried to kill me last night,” Fox said.

  “Where’s he now?”

  “Dead.”

  “Look, Lachlan, what is this weakness at the Advocacy Center? This part of your Cooper murder conspiracy thing? What do you think the target is, economic?”

  “This is part of a planned coup d’état in France, and that’s just the beginning,” Fox said. “The target is information.”

  “Yes, but what information?”

  “Total. All of it,” Fox said, sitting on the edge of his desk. “Is there a means for gaining access to the COMINT programs of NSA via the Advocacy Center?”

  “No, we only provide them with the relevant economic info,” Dunn replied. “And none of it is raw transcripts.”

  “So Cooper’s access was limited?” Fox asked.

  “Yes, it was…” Dunn trailed off.

  “There’s no way for an Advocacy Center staffer to access inside the NSA?” Fox waited a while for Dunn to reply. “Hello?”

  Dunn hung up on Fox and looked at himself in the rear-view mirror of the car. He was as white as a ghost.

  “Driver, the Advocacy Center, fast,” Dunn ordered.

  “I might not be able to get you to the Hill on time,” the driver said as he did a U-turn in the street and powered off in the direction of the Center.

  “You just let me worry about that,” Dunn said.

  100

  WASHINGTON

  Kate walked onto the executive floor of the Advocacy Center, holding her handbag close and her head down with guilt. It was later in the morning than she had planned on coming in, the floor filled with staff that she didn’t have the wherewithal to face. They all wanted to lend their support, to show how much they cared for her, that they were there if she needed them. She knew she should have shared in their conversations of condolences as they too were suffering from the loss of Cooper, but her mind had moved far too many paces beyond such action. She had an official purpose here this morning, signing her leave forms for the Deputy Director and clearing out her office. Her hands shook and the thought that she looked suspicious made her stomach spin.

  In her office she went to her desk, rifled through the drawers and packed a few personal items into a file box. Some photos lined a picture rail along one wall and she packed them too, even the business ones. She had no intention of ever displaying them again, not even the one taken with her parents on her graduation day from Harvard. From her wall she took her degree certificates and awards, placing them on top of the box and putting the lid on. She was surprised that it was all packed so quickly.

  She took a deep breath, looked about the room, and left—only this time through a side door.

  Cooper’s office immediately felt wrong. All the blinds were shut, a state she’d never seen it in, giving it a cave-like appearance. It was cold too, as if he’d left his zoned air-conditioning on its coldest setting. Her back, neck and face were wet with sweat. Her shoulders and hands tensed.

  She took a breath and walked into the room, not exhaling until she had placed her box and handbag on the desk and partially opened the blinds. The horizontal light coming through the timber blinds hinted at life in this room that felt so dead.

  Kate blew out her breath and was sure she saw it fog in the sunlight. She took in another deep one, waiting to let her nerves settle. She closed her eyes, and went over in her mind the location of Cooper’s safe, his combination that he’d had her memorise due to his terrible memory with numbers. She exchanged breaths, her hands started to steady—

  “Kate?”

  The voice nearly made her jump out of her skin. She heard herself give a little squeal, the involuntary noise in turn surprising the speaker.

  She turned around to see the Assistant Director at the main door to the office.

  “Oh, hi, Fiona,” she said. She wiped the back of her hand across her sweaty brow in an attempt to regain some composure. Dried her sweaty palms down her dress as if smoothing out the crinkles.

  “You okay?” the Assistant Director asked. She took a couple of steps inside the office and reached for the light switch.

  “Fiona—do you mind if I just stay in here for a while, with the lights off?” Kate said.

  Fiona stopped short of switching the lights on and stared at Kate for a few seconds before replying.

  “Of course,” she answered, moving back out the door. “I’ll be in my office when you’re ready, come and see me before you leave.”

  “Thanks,” Kate replied. She watched Fiona close the door and felt her heart start to steady again. She moved to the desk, resting her hands on it to support herself. Her heart still pumped fast, her breaths shallow and short. She allowed herself a couple of minutes to settle, then walked around behind the big mahogany desk and opened a false panel under the side drawers.

  She entered the combination in the electronic keypad and pressed her thumb on the biometric scanner. The thick door hissed open and she took out a small plastic box.

  101

  WASHINGTON

  Dunn walked into the foyer of the Department of Commerce building that housed the Advocacy Center, straight through the metal detectors that alarmed as he went through. None of the guards would stop a full marine colonel in dress uniform. He waited for the elevator and stepped forward as it chimed, and a woman bumped into him as she rushed to exit, nearly spilling her file box in the process. He pr
essed the third floor button and rubbed the sweat from his hands as he rode alone in the lift.

  Two minutes later he was at the Assistant Director’s office.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel, I don’t have the combinations to John Cooper’s safe,” she said, shocked at seeing the military leader of her department in the building.

  “Get security to reset it, now,” Dunn said. He couldn’t bring himself to wait the time out in Cooper’s office, so he paced the hallway.

  Twenty minutes later Dunn was back in his car, the driver flooring it up Constitution Avenue.

  He sat there, slumped in the leather seat, stunned. While the key was not there in the safe, it could well be at Cooper’s house. He’d organise a black-ops team to go in there tonight and sweep for it. How could he have overlooked that? After all, only he and John had one of these access keys.

  He looked out of the window as the treasury building flashed by, not registering the sight …

  8 June 1967

  The General Quarters call blasted the air about theLiberty. Still, Dunn felt himself stuck to the aft deck, unable to move.

  Three Dassault Mirage IIICs came from the direction of the sun, directly at him, in perfect attack formation.

  Streams of bullets zapped into the sea broadside to theLiberty and traced up and over the hull like lasers. Designed to penetrate tank armour, the cannon-fire from the Mirage fighters sank through the skin of theLiberty as though the old ship were made of cardboard.

  Dunn was blown high into the air as a line of tracers ripped up the middle of the dish behind him. The explosion was like a firecracker in a can, sending him clear over the railing to the main gangway below. Landing face-down, chest ablaze as several ribs cracked, his cheek came to rest on a red-hot bullet scar in the deck. The blistering pain jerked him to his senses. He could hear everything, smell the fires and burned flesh, see the gore.