“It has become increasingly difficult to recruit skilled men.” Traiman spoke as he looked out at the city, his back to Rahmad. “We have had to increase salaries and bonuses, and to give assurances we prefer not to give. Revelations from our friend Andrioli could compromise our plans, not to mention the efforts of the teams we have already put in place. The longer he remains at large, the greater the risk.”
“I understand.”
“We are at a crossroads, Rahmad, and time is a luxury we do not have. You understand that too, I presume.”
“I do.”
Traiman turned to face him. “It happens that I do know where we can find Mr. Andrioli. We have a team ready to depart for the United States today.”
Once again, Rahmad was rocked by Traiman’s superior intelligence sources. “Where?” he asked, straining to sound composed.
“Don’t be concerned,” Traiman said with an abrupt wave of his hand.
Rahmad wanted to know where Andrioli was and how Traiman had learned of his location, but held his tongue.
“You will meet with the team this morning. Right now. They will debrief you. Tell them everything you know about Andrioli. Give them all the information your men have gathered.”
“Of course,” Rahmad agreed quickly.
Traiman replied with an impatient look that said he no longer expected much from Rahmad. “Our teams are moving into place in New York and San Francisco. They’re already situated in London and Rome. However, we received some other bad news. The group in Washington has been compromised.”
“I am aware of that,” Rahmad said, grateful to finally be told something he already knew, even if he had learned of it from Fox News before leaving the States. “A tragedy.”
“Yes,” Traiman agreed. Although Rahmad doubtlessly suspected that he was behind the explosion at Loubar, there was no reason for him to suppose that Traiman had orchestrated the betrayal of the team in Washington.
“How were they discovered?” Rahmad asked.
“We’re investigating that now. Their cell is being blamed for the explosion at Loubar.”
“Is that possible?”
“Of course not.”
Rahmad’s eyes narrowed as he said, “Their capture must have been a blow to our friends here.”
Traiman nodded, not revealing to Rahmad that he had been the one behind the exposure of the hit team in Washington, “Yes, a shame, but all part of the business we have chosen. For now we must deal with the technical supplies being shipped from Loubar. Since the problem with Mr. Fryar has been resolved to our satisfaction, we’ll need to monitor the situation until a new chief executive of that company is selected.”
“Of course.”
Traiman also kept to himself the pressure he was receiving from Qaddafi’s regime to leave Tripoli. He was becoming a political liability, and was preparing to abandon his bunker in Libya for a yacht that would take him to anonymous safety on the Mediterranean. In the meantime, the release of the shipment from Loubar would be enough to buy him some needed time.
“Your assistance may be required in that process,” he told Rahmad. “If you are contacted by a man named Groat, you are to give him your full cooperation.”
TWENTY-FIVE
It was nearly two in the morning by the time Jordan and Christine had finished talking. She claimed not to know anything more of importance than she had already shared with him, but Sandor encouraged her to go over everything again, filling in some blanks along the way.
Jimmy McHugh was actually her half brother, which explained their different last names. He was more than ten years older than Christine. Born when their mother was a teenager too young to take care of her baby. Jimmy was raised by foster parents, and Christine never knew of his existence until after both of her parents had died. Christine, who believed she was an only child, had come to live in the care of her mother’s sister, Aunt Sarah in Wilkes Barre. It was Aunt Sarah who told both Christine and Jimmy the truth. Jimmy, who was already in the service, had begun writing to his sister from Vietnam. Christine met him a couple of times after the war, but he was moving around a lot in those days, and they lost touch again for several years.
Christine had difficulty speaking about her family, at times unable to look directly at Jordan as she recounted her personal history. Jordan helped keep her on track, not expressing his continuing skepticism, eventually leading her back to her final meeting with McHugh in Paris.
Christine said that she had begun to hear from Jimmy again less than a year ago. There were some phone calls and letters from overseas. Then a few months ago he had written and asked her to come to France.
When she visited her brother in Paris, she really believed it was going to be a family reunion and a vacation. “The day after I arrived, that’s when he told me the truth. At least most of it. He said he needed help to get away from the people he was working for. That’s why he sent me to Madrid. He wanted them to believe we were going to visit the Prado and all that, with my being an art history professor.”
“You mentioned.”
“Well, an assistant professor.”
“Right. But he put you in harm’s way. They could have come looking for you to find him.”
She was sitting up against the padded headboard now. “I know,” she said. “What else could he do? He needed me.”
Jordan realized he was becoming angry at this dead man’s thoughtlessness and the selfish risks he took at her expense. Then he thought of Dan Peters, and of Beth, and exhaled slowly. “I guess he did,” he said.
“He still does,” she said softly.
He let that go. “And you didn’t share any of this with Prescott?”
“Not really. I just told him that Jimmy was my brother. He didn’t seem very interested in my past.”
“What was he interested in?”
“Mainly about anything Jimmy told me, how I came to be visiting him, that stuff.”
“Did you tell him about Paris and Madrid?”
“Yes. But actually, it was the other man who asked me about it.”
“Covington?”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Everything except about meeting Tony.”
“Did you talk about helping him?”
“I told you, I never even mentioned his name.”
“Did they?”
She shook her head.
“Well, we’ll find out how much help we can be to Mr. Andrioli in a few hours. Let’s get some rest.”
She got up from the bed and pulled back her side of the covers. “I don’t have anything to sleep in,” she said.
Jordan stood up and turned down the other half of the bedspread. “How about I turn around, you get yourself ready and climb under the sheets?’
She laughed. “What a prude you are, Mr. Sandor.” She began to undress. “You going to just stand there and make me feel ridiculous?”
“Sorry,” Jordan said, his back to her now. He stripped down to his underpants, then dialed the automated wake-up call mechanism. He climbed under the sheets and switched off his light as she did the same on her side of the bed.
“Just one last thing,” he said quietly into the darkness. “Who is Tony to you? Really.”
“I told you. He’s Jimmy’s best friend.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“And you’re willing to risk your life to get to him, to warn him?”
He waited until she finally said, “No. That’s not what this is about. Not for me. Jimmy wanted to do something. He and Tony, they have information they wanted to give to someone they could trust.”
“And that’s us.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“All right.”
“But what you just said. About risking my life.”
“Yes?”
“It’s hard for me to think of it like that. I still can’t, you know?”
“I understand.”
The
y let the darkness fill the quiet for a while.
“It’s hard for me to believe Jimmy is gone,” she said.
Jordan didn’t respond.
“You’ll watch out for me, won’t you?”
“Yes, I will. Now try and get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be another long day.”
He heard her utter a sigh. Felt her relax a little beside him.
He wanted to believe her, but he didn’t. She had just lost her brother, and yet she hadn’t even mentioned a funeral. Her family saga was sketchy at best, delivered in a staccato fashion that spoke more of invention than remembrance. He believed that she was truly frightened, but he still wasn’t convinced he knew what was driving her.
Prescott found Covington in the hotel lobby. It was the middle of the night. Neither the late hour nor his sour mood helped Prescott’s lousy complexion and homely face. There were no polite greetings as he approached.
“Well?” Covington asked.
“Still nothing,” Prescott admitted.
“I wish I could understand this. I really do. You were alerted that they were on the move and you lost them fifty yards from the hotel.”
“Save it,” Prescott barked back at him. “You can throw your weight around someplace else. My people know their job.”
“Of course.”
“We’re working on a lead. They may have been spotted on foot, heading up Broadway.”
“Look, don’t misunderstand. I’m not here to criticize the Bureau’s procedures. But we have a shared problem. We need to find them, or it’ll be an embarrassment to both of us.”
“Not to mention a danger to the Frank girl, if your friend Sandor is allowed to run amuck.”
“Yes, that too,” Covington replied, sounding less concerned than Prescott had expected, but he let it go.
“So when are you going to drop this State Department bullshit and tell me why the CIA is involved?”
Covington pressed his thin lips together and nodded. “You need to make a phone call,” he said. “And so do I.”
TWENTY-SIX
As Sandor struggled to find a couple of hours’ sleep in the middle of the New York night, Mahmoud Rahmad was completing his interview with two men who had been brought to Vincent Traiman’s office in the heart of Tripoli.
One was an American, tall and trim with straight, dark hair and pointed features. The second was an Englishman, who stood a bit shorter than his companion, with reddish hair, a wide nose and pale, inert eyes. They were each neatly attired in suits and ties, ready to pose as corporate types who would soon be en route to the United States.
Traiman was in attendance as Rahmad provided the details of the information he had gathered on McHugh, Andrioli and the events of the past two days in New York.
The two assassins listened without speaking, their taciturn manner nettling Rahmad.
“McHugh did not know Andrioli’s location,” Rahmad told them. “McHugh’s sister was their go-between.” He looked from the American to the Englishman, but neither reacted. While Rahmad shared what he knew, he also wanted information from them. That was his business, after all. Information.
He had no way of knowing that these men were under strict orders from Traiman to reveal nothing. Neither was even authorized to disclose their ultimate destination.
Rahmad proceeded with his monologue, going over things twice at Traiman’s prompting.
Then Traiman stood and announced the interview was at an end.
He and Rahmad bid the men good fortune, then had them escorted to a car for the ride to the airport. There, they would board a flight to Paris, the first leg on their journey to Miami International and then Fort Lauderdale.
At first light , Bill Sternlich got out of bed without waking his wife, pulled on his old, white terrycloth bathrobe and shuffled his way into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. His laptop was on the table, and he connected to the internet. As he waited for the water to boil, the screen on his computer came to life, and he checked his e-mails to see whether any leads on Jordan’s requests for information had come through. Sandor had told him to drop the search, but curiosity was a professional hazard. There were several messages, none related to his requests on James McHugh. He scrolled down, stopping at an e-mail from an unfamiliar source. The transmission was marked “Urgent!”
He opened it and stared at the screen. The note read:
The girl was a warning to those who interfere.
You have been warned.
Sandor awoke in the unfamiliar surroundings of their room at the LaGuardia motel. He quietly slid out from under the sheets, canceled the wake-up call and grabbed his clothes from the chair. He showered and dressed before Christine was up.
He had his leather bag in the bathroom, and carefully removed the S & W .45 and the Walther PPK with their extra clips. He wrapped each gun in a hand towel, stuffed them back in the satchel and opened the door.
She was still asleep. He stood over the bed, watching her for a moment. He was a professional. She was a liability. He would take her to Florida and try to find Anthony Andrioli. After that, he would have to cut her loose.
“Come on,” he said, gently shaking her by the shoulder, rousing her into consciousness.
Christine looked around, confused for a moment, then smiled at him as she raised her arms and stretched. “I was having the strangest dream.”
“Tell me about it on the plane. It’s time to get ready.” Jordan pulled on his jacket and picked up his bag. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve got to take care of something.”
She looked worried.
“I’ll come right back,” he repeated. “Bolt the door behind me.”
Sandor walked the five long blocks to the FedEx drop box he had called for the night before. The box stood in front of one of the better hotels near the airport. He opened the top slot holding supplies, pulling out one of the large Tyvek envelopes and a mailing label. He wrote out the address of the drop-box center in Fort Lauderdale he had looked up, using the name from his second passport as the recipient. He also used a false name and address for the sender and checked off the box that read “Bill Recipient.” Then he pasted the label to the envelope.
Jordan stopped and had a look around. People were already coming and going at this hour, but no one was paying any attention to him. He pulled the two towels from his satchel, placed them in the envelope, sealed it with the adhesive strip and dropped the package with a thud into the metal deposit box.
Sandor knew there was no chance to get his weapons past security at the airport, even if he checked the leather bag through. The high-resolution screeners would have their sirens blaring in an instant. It had been too late last night to get them out for delivery this morning, and he would not have been happy about giving up the protection anyway, just in case he had been followed to the motel. Sending them ahead was his only chance to get them down South, although he would not be able to retrieve them until tomorrow, assuming they would not be intercepted in transit. He might have other options for securing a weapon once he was in Florida, but he couldn’t be sure.
Jordan’s immediate problem was that he was unarmed now with so far to travel and so much ahead of him. He felt naked.
He hurried back to the motel through the chilly morning, mulling over what still remained in his leather case.
He had his real passport; the second passport in the name of Scott Kerr; two clean credit cards in the name of his alias; a dummy passport form that could be made up with a photo and name, as the need arose; almost ten thousand dollars in cash, which he had already been using, a hundred dollars at a time; both cell phones, which may or may not be compromised at this point—he had to assume they were—and a small address book with names, phone numbers and a series of codes that might yet come in handy.
He inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, his breath forming a small cloud in the cold air before him as he walked briskly along, won
dering if he was already being followed.
Prescott and Covington sat down for an early breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Their meeting a few hours before, after losing Sandor’s trail, had not satisfied the FBI man, and he demanded a full briefing.
“I’ve been authorized by the Agency to advise you of certain facts,” Covington began. There was neither explanation nor apology for the deception he had employed up to that moment. “McHugh was wanted by our CTC group for questioning. Sandor is one of our former operatives who became involved, strictly by happenstance.”
“Bullshit,” Prescott said.
“Excuse me?”
“I said bullshit. And I mean it on at least two counts. First of all, you spooks don’t have any former operatives. The CIA doesn’t have a retirement plan for field agents. And his being there was no coincidence. I also made my phone call, and Homeland Security wants you to give me the full background on everything you’ve got. This is a domestic issue, Covington, and CIA has no jurisdiction.”
“That’s your story,” Covington said and picked up the menu.
Prescott reached across the table and pushed the menu aside. “It’s a little late to be throwing your weight around. We lost this guy because of you. Your men interfered with our containment detail, and I need to know how you want me to fill out my report. Should I say that you wanted him gone or that you’re just an idiot?”
Covington blinked. He was smaller and more narrowly built than Prescott. He was not a man comfortable with physical anger. He placed the menu on the table. “Sandor is on the move because he stumbled onto something, and we’re using that to assist us. He and Miss Frank may have a lead on someone we need to find. An associate of McHugh’s. Whether you choose to believe me or not, Sandor is no longer working for us.”
As far as Covington was concerned, this was an accurate statement. At the moment, there was only one man in the CIA who knew otherwise. “The fact is, he and the girl are in grave danger, but we are willing to take that risk, given the serious matters at stake.”
Targets of Deception Page 14
