by Henry Porter
‘Won’t be a problem – she’s in DC.’
He left and she called Matthew Corner in Warren Speight’s office, with Martin Reid’s warning ringing in her ears. Snake he might be, but she and Denis, who had, after all, been Mila Daus’s primary target for the past three years, had nothing to lose. Corner put her through to Speight and it was agreed that she would appear in front of the committee at 2 p.m. on the following Monday. The chairman of the committee, Harry Lucas, had allotted two and a half hours.
‘That’s like a confirmation hearing,’ she said. ‘How will you fill it?’
‘Oh, we’re not going to have any problem with that, Mrs Hisami. I have plenty of questions, and I know that when my colleagues on both sides hear that you’ll be appearing, there’ll be no shortage of interest.’
‘When will that be?’ she asked.
‘Considering recent history, we thought it advisable not to announce your participation in these proceedings until after the committee has risen for lunch. A few members will be informed ahead of time, but for the majority your evidence will come as a pleasant surprise.’
‘Can I be open with you, Congressman Speight?’
‘I would expect nothing less.’
‘Please regard this as confidential. My husband is not at all well. They’re not sure what’s the matter with him, but he is not responding in the way they hoped. If his condition worsens, I will need to be by his side. I hope you understand.’
‘I don’t wish to presume, but it is my assessment that your husband would, in these dire circumstances, wish you to appear, even if things look very bad.’
‘I need that option,’ she said. It was not only an option to be with Denis, but one that allowed her to bow out of the hearing if things went wrong, or if they didn’t manage to prise the secrets from Denis’s computer.
‘That’s reasonable. I will tell Chairman Lucas.’
‘Thank you. I want to say something else. When I met you I felt that I could trust you, Congressman. But since then I’ve been most specifically warned against doing that.’
He thought about this. ‘I’m grateful for your candour, and you’re right that in this line of work it’s advisable to watch who you trust. But I have found that when two people have the same interests at heart and hope for a particular outcome, no matter where they start from, trust is never an issue. Do you play bridge, Mrs Hisami?’
‘No.’
‘A good practice in bridge is to trust your partner. Never assume he or she has made a mistake. Watch closely. Keep the faith and we will prevail. I’ll see you Monday.’
From the rooftop, she phoned Special Agent Reiner. Three times it went straight to voicemail, so she left a message for him to call her on the fourth. It was odd that he hadn’t been in touch since her return.
She returned to Denis’s bedside and, between talking to him, played his favourite music. He was oddly catholic in his taste – AC-DC, Dire Straits, the Cranberries, Bach, Haydn and Mozart. As a young man, he’d listened to heavy metal on a Walkman when fighting in Northern Iraq, and it was still his practice, if he had something to think through, to go to the end of their property in Mesopotamia with his headphones on and look out at the ocean. She found a video that Denis admired of the Cranberries performing ‘Zombie’, a raw protest against the violence in Northern Ireland. At the end of the number her phone signalled an incoming call. It was Special Agent Reiner.
‘You were trying to reach me, Mrs Hisami. What can I do for you?’
‘Are you aware of my husband’s condition?’
‘I had heard, yes.’
‘We’re trying very hard to reach him and stimulate his memory with familiar sounds and objects, and I wondered if you could return his briefcase to me. I understand that you’ll need to retain the calendar, but there are things in there that I would like to use to try to remind him who he is. Can you do that for us?’
Reiner coughed. ‘That won’t be possible, I’m afraid.’
‘It’s my husband’s property, and you have all you need on the attack in Congress. I’ve given you as much help as I know how. The suspect is dead. Why?’
‘The investigation is still ongoing. I’d truly like to oblige, but there’s really nothing I can do at this time.’ She thought briefly of asking for the calculator, but dismissed it as too risky. ‘Was there anything else, Mrs Hisami? No? We will no doubt be in contact when we need.’ No mention of what had happened in Macedonia. His manner was remote and entirely official.
She lowered the phone. Denis’s eyes had turned to her and were watching.
Tulliver would normally catch the shuttle to Manhattan, but he’d heard the door-to-door limo service was as quick when you took into consideration delays and cab lines at La Guardia, so a car picked him up at his hotel half an hour after he left Anastasia. She was right to warn him about the phones, but he’d need one when he was in Manhattan to arrange a rendezvous with Angel. He’d brought an old phone and it was on charge at the USB port in front of him. The driver, a big talker named Andy, was eventually asked to keep quiet and Tulliver used the time to catch up on sleep.
He called Angel when they’d passed through the Lincoln Tunnel, but someone named Manny answered.
‘Is this the Hisami residence?’ he asked.
‘Think so, yes.’
‘What do you mean, you think so? Where’s Angel?’
‘Angel is illegal.’
‘What?’
‘Angel is with ICE – they say he is illegal. I am Manny, from Nicaragua. His friend. I watch place for Angel. He is in jail.’
‘Are you at Mr Hisami’s apartment now?’
‘No, at home.’
‘Why did you say you were? How long will it take you to get there?’
Manny had problems of comprehension but finally it was established that he was in the Bronx and it would take him forty-five minutes to an hour to reach Tribeca. He promised he would leave soon. Tulliver repaired to a sports bar and watched baseball. It was over ninety minutes before Manny phoned to say he was in the apartment. He had some bad news, however. Someone had been there and the place looked a mess.
Tulliver went to see what kind of mess before using Manny’s phone to call Anastasia. ‘They had Angel arrested on a phony immigration offence and tossed the place,’ he said, surveying the empty drawers, upturned furniture and gutted cushions. ‘Maybe you should check Mesopotamia.’
Anastasia muttered, ‘Got it,’ then hung up.
Tulliver began his search. First he looked beneath the top of the elaborate drinks table, but someone had already lifted the bottles and decanters and checked the space below. He went to the office. The five or six desktop computers used by Denis’s staff when they were crashing a deal were all askew. He had no doubt their passwords had been hacked and their hard drives stripped. An Apple laptop Denis used for business had gone, an iPad also. The box files had been opened and papers dumped at the bottom of the shelves, plainly unread. In the small library all the books had been pulled from the shelves and left in heaps. There was no attempt to hide the search, or the desperation behind it. Manny came to ask if he should start clearing up the kitchen, or wait until Angel was released later that day.
Tulliver did a double take. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Angel was being released?’
He pulled out his personal phone. There was brief message from Angel’s wife in Spanish.
‘You get some big-shot lawyer and Angel is free, right?’ said Manny with a broad grin.
No such lawyer had been employed, but Tulliver didn’t bother to question that.
‘Call Mrs Lopes and tell her to get Angel here as soon as possible.’ This he did, then stomped off, bow-legged and cheerful, to deal with the kitchen. Manny was more maintenance man than major domo, but when Angel appeared three hours later his talents were needed. It was Angel’s idea to fo
llow the electricity. If there was a computer hidden somewhere, it would, given Mr Hisami’s fastidious nature, be on charge. They began to check all the sockets in the apartment. Manny, with a headlamp fixed around his reversed baseball cap, traced every flex and cable along ducts, behind radiators and through wardrobes and cupboards. At midnight they found what they were looking for – a socket in the office that had been hard-wired with an extension lead that vanished under the reclaimed oak panel floor. Manny followed it with a wire tracker to an air-conditioning vent on the wall. He unhooked the grille, peered inside then felt the top of the vent. A grin spread across his face. A disguised security drawer. There was a lock but no key. He forced it open easily with a pry bar and the drawer, in which lay a pristine laptop, slid out.
Tulliver unplugged it and slipped it into a padded envelope. He thanked Manny, gave him a hundred-dollar note and asked Angel to remain.
‘Tell me about the lawyer, Angel,’ he said when Manny had gone. ‘I want to know everything about your arrest and release.’
Cuth Avocet liked to do crossword puzzles and he sent what he insisted later was an ingenious clue by text to Samson. ‘Meet oldest bird in conservative surroundings.’ Samson knew to go to the Museum of Natural History and without much trouble found his way to the dinosaur wing, paid for by the late David H. Koch, one of the ultra-Conservative Koch brothers – thus, the ‘conservative surroundings’ – and to a cabinet of four fossils, the last two of which clearly had feathered wings. In front of these stood the Bird, in his oversized trainers and faded cap, mouth open in wonder.
‘Are you the fossil or the oldest bird?’ said Samson to his back.
‘Contemporaries,’ he replied, turning with an unhinged look of joy. ‘Good trip? No problems with our friends in the Office?’
Samson moved close to him. ‘Nyman and Ott are going to be a problem here in Washington. They’re working against us through the UK ambassador and the White House. The CIA has been called off and Anastasia thinks the FBI have been told to find other things to do. They refused to give her the briefcase, by the way.’
‘That’s a pisser,’ said the Bird, turning back to the cabinet and the fossil of a small dinosaur frozen in balletic pose. ‘But I’m sure my new friend over there will get round that.’
Naji was examining a cabinet of marine dinosaurs. He wore ear buds and hadn’t seen Samson. ‘We did a deal,’ continued the Bird. ‘Yesterday was spent in the National Air and Space Museum and today is dinosaurs and large mammals.’ He laughed. ‘He’s a hell of a character. We attended a lecture with an astrophysicist named Sanjana Vadiki – no, I hadn’t heard of her either – but Naji had and engaged her in a debate about the nature of gravity in black holes. She tried to find out who he was, but we thought it best to leave before he got too deep in.’
‘How are we fixed with the foot doctor?’
‘He took the bait good and proper. My brother’s name and rank are what did it. I don’t think I told you that Alyn makes Mussolini look soft. Having acquainted himself with Alyn’s barbaric slaughter of deer and birds, he’s gagging to meet me and talk weaponry. We’re on for the morrow. He has asked details about you, so I suggest you brush up your profile.’
‘Are we meeting at Seneca Ridge? That’s crucial.’
‘He hasn’t given me an address. We need $20,000 cash deposit if we’re going to talk business about the Nitro Express. He wants to see the money and know we’re good for it. That’s our entry ticket. I’ll arrange that with Macy this afternoon.’
‘I’ll explain on the way. Nine o’clock at your hotel. I’ll bring the car.’
‘Needs to be showy,’ said the Bird.
Samson glanced at him with some amusement. ‘So I don’t let you down, Cuth?’
Naji wandered over and gave Samson a fist bump. They adjourned to the café, where Naji consumed three Danishes and a lot of Diet Coke. Samson aimed his words at the table. ‘The laptop is on its way now. Can you get into it without the calculator?’
Naji threw his head back. ‘It’ll take a long time. Mr Hisami is the only one who knows the code for the calculator, and that will take me hours to bypass.’
‘What about the computer? Can you bypass the need for a code?’
Naji shook his head slowly. ‘There are two things we need, and we don’t have either. We can’t yet prove Mila Daus was once a Stasi officer and we don’t have access to the evidence of her networks. We don’t have the code and the laptop is somewhere between New York and here, so we concentrate on exposing Daus. For that I’ll need to see the film of Seneca Ridge again. Can you send it to me, please?’
Naji slid a thumb drive across the table. ‘This is all footage from the drone. Close-ups, also.’
‘That’s helpful. You’ll need to watch it, Cuth.’
‘Already have. Lots of good film of her.’
Samson got up. ‘We’ll speak later.’ He gave the Bird a tilt of the head to suggest that maybe they shouldn’t be running around town too much before the committee hearing. The Bird nodded.
Chapter 32
Seneca Ridge
Samson watched the footage early the next day in his room, with coffee and a bowl of fruit and granola. He’d had no contact with Anastasia but had received messages from Tulliver overnight informing him of the situation with Denis and the successful search for ‘a lost item’ in New York. By return, Samson said he knew things were difficult at the hospital but asked him to make sure that she would be free later.
The film of Seneca Ridge was more recent than the one shown in the rehearsal room – the woods had filled out and the trees around the houses were in leaf and cast deep shadows. From the dates on the footage Samson realised that Mila Daus appeared with her bodyguards on Friday evening at around six or Saturday morning at eleven. She always dressed in dark colours, usually brown or black, and invariably wore sunglasses, but once or twice there were clear images of her from an angle, so it was possible to identify her without any doubt. From the flight log of Learjet 60 XR, Rudi Rosenharte had learned that she invariably flew in from DC, Boston, MA, or Richmond, VA, where her businesses were mostly located. Occasionally, weekend guests arrived at the same time or a little after her. He concluded that she almost certainly wouldn’t be there that day, which was a Thursday.
Gaspar and his weekend wife seemed to occupy adjacent houses on the property, while the prow of Seneca Ridge, with its views over a small, meandering river and tracts of forest, was reserved for guests. The security presence was light, essentially just two men at any one time. Three utility task vehicles were parked behind Gaspar’s house and trails led down from the rocky outcrop of Seneca Ridge into the woods. Most of the service activity – the arrival of catering staff in a blue van and maintenance men and deliveries – also took place behind Gaspar’s quarters. Samson guessed the foot doctor ran the household for her.
He had time before taking delivery of the rented Range Rover to look through footage of the comings and goings at the weekends, with some close-ups of guests arriving. He searched for the balding, shaven head of Anatoly Stepurin but, unsurprisingly, failed to find him. Yet there was a large man who lumbered with his feet pointing outwards and wore a cap that gave Samson pause. His face was hidden but there was something familiar about him, and Samson instantly remembered Ulrike telling him about the famous businessman who had been compromised with a young girl. He clipped that part of the film and sent it to Anastasia via a messaging app.
He felt there was little hope of accessing and organising the information on the computer before her appearance at the committee’s hearing, but if they could prove who Mila Daus was, that would go a long way to disrupting her operation. He changed into his blue suit jacket, a clean pair of trousers, a blue shirt and coffee-brown silk tie. For the first time, he combed and shaped his new beard, which was no novelty for him. His entire time in Syria and Northern Iraq, searching for Ayshel His
ami, he hadn’t shaved. He gave himself a parting, which he never usually bothered with, and put on the slightly blue-tinted glasses that changed his appearance so well. Overnight, he had done a lot of work on two social media sites, fleshing out his business life with mentions of deals and banks he was working with, dropping the names of famous investors. He also worked up the gun-club aspect, using stills from videos of the gun range at Club de Tir Sportif de Créteil and photographs of targets, guns and men brandishing pistols. There were also heavy hints about his admiration for Le Pen’s National Front. He sent the biographical information to the Bird, who passed it on without links to the foot doctor, who would doubtless conduct his own quick checks and feel the more reassured for having done so.
Anastasia saw a message from Samson at 8.30 a.m., a couple of hours after he had sent it, and looked closely at the few seconds of film. At first, it meant nothing to her because he hadn’t explained why he’d sent it. Then it dawned that she should concentrate on the central figure in a group of three walking between a black vehicle and one of the houses at Seneca Ridge. The individual carried a jacket over his arm, held out in front of him, and walked in a particular way, at the same time both awkward and determined. It reminded her very much of the man who had twice visited the hospital in the last ten days, offering her support and all his resources, but had not in fact produced anything of use. She replied: ‘Marty Reid.’ At which Samson sent her an exclamation mark then a beat later another message: ‘Do you think he could be the businessman she compromised with an underage girl? Does that seem possible with Reid???’
She thought about that. ‘Maybe’ she replied.
‘I have an idea,’ wrote Samson.
