Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766)

by Caplan, Thomas

  “Nor has anyone brought your imagination to bear on such a set of events,” Philip offered flatteringly. “In effect, you created your own opportunity.”

  “One mostly does,” Ian reflected. “When a moment in history arrived on one’s doorstep, I extrapolated well from it. That’s as far as I am willing to go—and that was the easy part. The hard part will be seeing it through without drawing the attention of those who might seek to take our bounty off our hands. One false step now and we will find ourselves in the crosshairs of every security service in the world, not to mention other outfits that abide by even less forgiving rules. We are no match for any of them. So the trick must lie in remaining invisible. Even if they should draw conclusions that seem to implicate us, on inspection we will be as we always are: enjoying our good fortune and lavishing it on others in plain sight. Who but we could maintain that façade and at the same time, in an almost supernatural act of legerdemain, broker the greatest deal in history? By all means, Philip, maintain your paranoia. It’s your strong suit. Just don’t show it.”

  “I try to think not of the ultimate reward but of the job immediately to hand,” Philip said.

  “Right. This is your main chance, just as it is, if not my last hurrah, then at least my crowning achievement.”

  “In the meantime we have a plan to stick to. Where are our counterparties, I wonder?”

  “The last I heard, they were still in Geneva.”

  “They can drink there. They enjoy that,” Philip said.

  “Don’t be so sarcastic,” Ian admonished him, “and don’t underestimate the value of hypocrisy.”

  “I was at school in Geneva. I know the lay of that land. Anyway, they’ll want more than three warheads before they part with their cash.”

  “They will. And they’re entitled to it.”

  “Did Zhugov have the codes? That seems reckless.”

  “Only elements of them,” Ian said. “You are being unusually direct.”

  “Until now I’ve had—and felt—no need to know.”

  “What’s changed?”

  “Nothing,” Philip said, smiling. “I am simply interested in how the final pieces of the puzzle are to be fitted together. Having done my part, I think I should be allowed that much curiosity.”

  “Calm down,” Ian insisted. “I was just having a bit of fun with you. You deserve to be put in the picture, and for more reasons than you think. First, as you say, you’ve done your part. Second, someone, other than an aging trader who’s smoked and drunk too much in his time, must be trusted with the information. What’s mine will be Isabella’s one day, and I very much want that to be as much as possible. I’ve had many joys in this life, but no children. She’s the closest thing I have, and she couldn’t be closer if she were my own flesh and blood. Whatever happens, I’m trusting in you to look after her.”

  Philip stared directly into Ian’s eyes. “I hope it goes without saying.”

  “I’m afraid it has to, my boy. I have no one else I can turn to.”

  “May I give you some advice?” Philip asked. “Stop trying to convince yourself you’re older than you are. You are neither an old man nor one on the verge of old age. You’re in your prime, with decades to go. You’re seasoned. You’re there—”

  “Wherever ‘there’ is?” Ian interjected.

  “Aboard Surpass, to start with,” Philip said. “You can have anything you want. Half the young women in the world would think they’d died and gone to heaven after one look from you.”

  “That’s very gracious, if not entirely true.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Only too well,” Ian told him. “Now, about the codes: The elements Zhugov lacked were, alas, to be found in Moscow, where I’ve also done business.”

  “How long have you had them?’

  “Is that any of your business?”

  “No, but I’m glad to see you’ve taken my advice to heart. You’re already beginning to think like a younger man.”

  There was bliss in Ian’s smile. His ego was his soft spot. He said, “In fact, they were the first part of the equation. You do play backgammon, don’t you?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Have you had a look at the set on the gaming table?”

  “I haven’t,” Philip said, but did so then.

  “Have you ever seen a nuclear code?”

  “I’ve seen the discs, of course. As I understand it, the codes themselves are algorithms.”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Ian told him.

  “Are you asking if I normally visualize shapes or velocities from mathematical symbols? The answer is sometimes, but only with effort and not day in and day out. There are people who do. There were a number with me at MIT, but I was never one of them. That’s a gift you’re given. You cannot learn it. It’s like perfect pitch. Or any other gift that counts.”

  “The term ‘algorithm’ conjures two contrasting images, wouldn’t you agree? The first is of a device, which in fact need be no more than a scrambled SATCOM phone. The second is a series of symbols, perhaps equations or formulae, perhaps not, that can be recognized by the weapon itself and allow it to activate; an infinitely elaborated version of your basic remote control.

  “We are not talking about identifying who may or may not be in authority on any given system at any given point in time. We’re a step beyond that: where a nation’s command center is when it gives the instruction to launch.”

  “So the codes you were supplied were the ones effective at the moment Zhugov sequestered the warheads.”

  “Precisely,” Ian said. “Think of it as a dialogue. Each party talks and responds to the other. But there’s no going forward unless and until you have and have made sense of both parts.”

  Philip arrowed in. “So since everything’s a game, you’ve hidden the codes in your backgammon set.”

  “Amongst other places,” Ian suggested.

  “May I ask where?”

  “In a microchip just beneath the inlay on red’s thirteen point.”

  “And it’s SATCOM ready?”

  “My customers would not be satisfied in any other way.”

  “What makes you so sure they won’t use the warheads once they have them?”

  “They would need a more effective delivery system than the one they now possess.”

  “In time they might acquire one.”

  “That would be possible only from Iran today, and there’s too much bad blood on both sides for that. Tomorrow, who knows? North Korea and Ukraine have sold ballistic missiles, though, so far, smaller ones. Pakistan may go into the market. So might others, in due course. Somehow I don’t believe that it will matter. True enough, the world—certainly this corner of it—is unusually combustible these days, but whether they style themselves monarchs or revolutionaries, we are dealing—as I’ve only ever dealt—with men who love power, not death. Everyone has his principles, and that is and always has been mine.”

  “I fully understand. I wouldn’t be involved in this otherwise. But suppose they do sell them?”

  “No doubt it will be to like-minded people for a very large profit. Who am I to try to squeeze the last drop of juice from an orange?”

  “Who is anyone, really? Only a fool fails to understand that once a thing’s gone, it’s gone. In a way that’s the first rule of business. The sorts of things we are concerned with, mind you, mustn’t be allowed to go into the wrong hands, ever. But I take you at your word that these won’t. Actually, I’ll even go a bit further. The conventional wisdom may be that proliferation is entirely a bad thing. The more players with arms, the greater the chance one will go off, even trigger another, which will trigger a third. That’s the accepted logic. Yet it contains a perfectly obvious flaw. Could not one equally argue that the wider the dist
ribution of nuclear arms, the more certain it becomes that the result will be a standoff?”

  “One could do so very plausibly,” Ian said, exhaling the pungent smoke of his cigar, “and I have many times, as you know. You’re preaching to the preacher.”

  Philip’s emerging smile struck Ian, not for the first time, as that of a corrupted angel. “And if that is true, then we are not only making an indecent day’s profit. We’re also providing a service to humanity.”

  Ian’s blue eyes glimmered. Such was the nature of the human condition, locked in its morphing death dance of evil and good, he thought, that no individual could be expected to fix it with clarity. “History,” he said, “has arrived at stranger conclusions.”

  Chapter Nine

  Early in the morning, after Greg Logan’s film had been screened, Ty took a NetJet flight from Nice to Washington. At Dulles Airport he quickly cleared both immigration and customs and collected the rental car he had prearranged, a deliberately inconspicuous Taurus. As instructed, he followed the access road to I-495, the Washington Beltway, and the heavily trafficked inner loop of that to I-270. Within an hour he was exiting onto Maryland Route 15, at the Victorian spa town of Thurmont. Past the town he ascended toward higher elevation. A blacktop running a ridgeline of the Catoctins led him at last to a campsite marked only by number and approached by an unremarkable road through high forest. Some way down this road, out of sight of ordinary traffic, stood the gate to an unspecified military installation.

  The Naval Support Facility Thurmont, colloquially known as Camp David, was both larger and busier than Ty had imagined: an unexpected, landlocked outpost of the U.S. Navy incorporating a village of cabins for the use of the President and his guests as well as barracks and facilities for several hundred staff. He parked, as directed, in front of a low gray-clapboard building that held a theater and a bowling alley. The camp’s commander welcomed him there and promptly ferried them, via golf cart, along gravel paths that descended to his cabin. This bungalow sat on a slight hill rise a short distance from the President’s. Beyond a shallow vestibule its floor plan centered on a comfortable sitting room of the sort that might be found in any good American hotel. Directly off it, at right angles to each other, lay two more or less identical bedrooms, each with its own bath. A sailor placed Ty’s bag on a stand in the one directly opposite the front door.

  The camp commander, who also bore the rank of naval commander, said, “Dinner will be at seven o’clock in Laurel, which is at the other end of this road on the left and by far the largest of the lodges. You can’t miss it. Remember, out this door, left, and left again.”

  “Sounds easy enough,” Ty replied.

  “In the meantime have a nap or a walk or both. If there’s anything we can do for you, someone’s always at the other end of the telephone.”

  “Thank you,” Ty said, then after the captain had departed, settled into a corner of the striped-chintz sofa. On the glass coffee table before him rested a bowl of fresh fruit. He picked up a small bunch of seeded red grapes. As he devoured these, he paged through the leather-bound guest book that rested on the same table. In neat type it listed all the previous occupants of Dogwood as well as the dates of their visits. Among the long record of officials and presidential friends were many names he recollected from the newscasts and newspapers of his childhood.

  A few minutes later, Ty had ambled only as far as the bungalow known as Holly, on the front porch of which a man sat on a rocker, a book open in his lap, his face raised to the breeze, when he heard a golf cart coming toward him from behind. He and the man on the porch nodded to each other, after which Ty kept walking until the golf cart pulled to a sharp stop beside him.

  “Mr. Hunter?” inquired the young officer at its wheel.

  “Yes?”

  “The President would like to see you, sir.”

  Ty’s expression showed his surprise. “Now?” he asked.

  “At Aspen Lodge, sir,” the officer said, gesturing toward the passenger seat.

  The large living room of the President’s lodge was L-shaped, with a cathedral ceiling. It was paneled in yellow pine. On the far wall, panoramic plate-glass windows that could not be opened looked across the valley to mountain foliage in the distance. Nearer, an old plantation of tall evergreens stood just below a ridge on the horizon. Off to the left, a single fairway and putting green had been built into the hillside that fell away from the house. And to the right of this, a kidney-shaped swimming pool, bordered by flagstone, had been terraced into the land.

  Ty was still taking in the view when Garland White appeared from a hallway at the front of the lodge.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Hunter. Thank you for coming,” the President said, with more intimacy than Ty would have expected considering that they had met only once before. Politicians could be funny that way, Ty thought, having met a number of them by now. Either they drew you in or pushed you away; sometimes both.

  “Mr. President,” Ty replied, instinctively straightening himself. Garland White struck him as the kind of man who habitually appraised the weight and fitness of those he encountered. As with most politicians, there was an aspect of the peacock about him. Middle-aged, with dark hair grayed at the temples but dyed above, he was a couple of inches shorter than Ty. Although he did not possess the kind of looks that would have won him approval from casting agents in search of a leading man, his features were arranged with camera-friendly symmetry.

  “What an absolutely glorious day Daphne has for her sixteenth birthday,” the President mused. “She’ll be thrilled you’re here. Thank you for coming.”

  “It’s my honor,” Ty replied. “Thank you for having me.”

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I was eager to have a word with you, in confidence, before you’re surrounded by adoring teenage girls.”

  Ty smiled. “Just so you know,” he said, “they’re a little younger than my usual demographic.”

  “Women become more sophisticated every year,” Garland White reflected, “which is a real shame. These days the only people who don’t want to be grown up are grown-ups, am I right?”

  “I suppose it’s the old ‘the grass is always greener’ phenomenon,” Ty said.

  From the dim dining alcove where a swinging door opened onto the kitchen, a Filipino steward wheeled in a trolley bearing a selection of tea and coffee, bottled drinks, a brimming silver-plated ice bucket and glasses.

  “Tea or coffee? Or something stronger?” the President asked.

  “Tea, please,” Ty told him.

  “China or India?” the steward inquired.

  For an instant the question threw Ty. “China, please,” he replied at last. “Is that Lapsang souchong I see? That would be perfect, with no milk or sugar but a slice of lemon if you have it.”

  “Have a seat, please, wherever you like,” the President told him. “If you don’t mind, I’ve asked George Kenneth, my national security advisor, to join us.”

  Ty offered a faint nod but remained silent.

  “Here he is now,” the President said, shifting his focus to the front door, where a man of willowy frame paused uneasily as he balanced a stack of variously colored folios cradled in the crook of his left arm. Something about him was familiar to Ty, who could not for the moment place him.

  “Sorry,” Kenneth apologized, abstractedly and without appearing to mean it. His diction was cultivated, his manner, although he looked to be only a few years older than Ty, world-weary.

  Initially, their conversation felt idle. Then, when the steward had completed his service and retreated, Garland White began, “I’m sure it’s needless for me to say this, but I will anyway. This conversation could not be more sensitive.”

  “Understood,” Ty said, although he did not yet.

  “You have never been to Camp David before, and you were here today
solely for Daphne White’s birthday,” George Kenneth added, settling into his seat.

  “That’s how I remember it,” Ty agreed.

  “Anyway, Ty,” the President went on. “May I call you Ty?”

  “Everyone else does.”

  “Your security clearances have naturally lapsed.”

  “It’s been a while.” Ty felt suddenly anxious, in the grip of forces beyond his control.

  “After you left the service, why would you need them? Last evening, as certain facts began to emerge, I took the liberty of having them reinstated. You are now, once again, ‘Yankee White.’ Not that you will be speaking—or must ever speak—of these matters to anyone not in this room at present. The precaution is more for my benefit than yours.”

  “Classified information is classified for the President,” George Kenneth explained. “Legally, he is free to disclose it to whomever he wishes. Politically, it could create a firestorm if he were ever to do so.”

  “No one ‘not in this room,’” Ty repeated slowly and softly, as if conjuring all possible ramifications of that condition.

  “Unless such a person has been authorized by one of us,” the President said. “For all intents and purposes, that means no one else in the administration, no one on the Hill—”

  “They’re all footnotes straining to jump into the main text,” Kenneth added dismissively. “It also means no one in the press, obviously, and no one in your family or in your bed.”

  “Does the name Ian Santal mean anything to you?” the President asked.

  “I was at a party on his yacht only the night before last.”

  “We know that.”

  “Am I being watched?” Ty asked with mounting, barely concealable irritation.

  “By the paparazzi, not by us,” the President assured him. “Your photograph was on the wire.”

  “How much do you know about him?”

  “Only that he can be charming. That he is a collector, of lots of things. That he believes and hopes there’s life in outer space. And that he has a beautiful goddaughter.”