Iron Orchid

by Stuart Woods

  “I won’t be offended,” Holly said.

  “First of all, because of the way we disperse cash around the world, these funds will immediately become untraceable. In the unlikely event that the United States or any other country should invade our island and take over our bank, they will not find a name on your account, only a number, which will not be in any way traceable to you. The number will not be coded in any way that would reveal even the nationality of the customer.

  “The only thing traceable to you would be the credit card charges. When you view your credit card statement, you’ll be given the option of erasing the names of the payees-hotels, restaurants or shops, for instance. Only the amounts and dates of the charges would then appear on your statement, which you may access by entering your account number and a password, which you will designate. You may use as many as three passwords, each from four to twelve letters or digits or a combination of both.“

  “That sounds good.”

  “It is very important that you never forget the passwords, because if you do, you will not be able to access your account statements. In order to change the passwords, you would have to come personally here, to the bank.”

  Holly signed one card and put them both into her pocket.

  “The paper I gave you also has instructions for going to your account online,” Dellinger said. “Will there be anything else?”

  “No, I think that does it,” Holly said. She shook his hand and left the bank. Now the drug money she had stolen from the hundreds of millions confiscated in a huge raid was safe from anyone but her, and no one would ever be able to prove that she had it. At least, she hoped not.

  She spent the night in Georgetown, then, the following morning, flew back to the Bahamas. She spent two days there, shopping, eating and walking on the beach with Daisy, and on Monday morning she flew home to Orchid Beach.

  She, Ham and Ginny, Ham’s girlfriend, had dinner that night at the Ocean Grill in Vero Beach, then the following morning, she gave her house keys to the young policewoman who would be her caretaker, loaded her Jeep Grand Cherokee and drove with Daisy ninety miles to Palm Beach. There, at the Porsche dealer, she traded in the Jeep for a Porsche Cayenne Turbo, and paid for it, not with her new credit card, but with a check on her own bank account. Holly had been a woman of some substance since Jackson ’s will had made it so.

  By noon, she was headed north to Virginia.

  Two days later, at the appointed hour, she turned into an unmarked gate on a country road, went around a bend and saw a roadblock ahead. A man in civilian clothes, carrying an assault rifle, stopped her.

  “You seem to have taken a wrong turn,” he said. “Please turn around and go back to the highway.”

  Holly, as she had been instructed to do, handed him her U.S. passport. “My name is Barker,” she said. “I’m expected.”

  The man consulted a clipboard, very thoroughly compared her passport photograph to her face, then returned it to her. “And who might that be?” he asked, pointing to Daisy, who sat in the front passenger seat.

  “That is Daisy,” Holly replied. “She doesn’t have a passport.”

  The man checked his clipboard. “Her name is on the list,” he said. “Go all the way to the end of the drive, park your car and go into the white house, which is the administration building. You’ll be met.” He walked to the side of the road, tapped a code into a keypad, and the concrete roadblock swung slowly out of the way.

  Holly gave him a wave and drove past the barricade. After five minutes of winding through woods, she emerged at what appeared to be a large farmhouse.

  She had arrived at Camp Peary, which members of the Central Intelligence Agency referred to as “the Farm.”

  TWO

  HOLLY ALLOWED DAISY a moment in the bushes, then entered the old farmhouse. Immediately, a trim, middle-aged woman emerged from a side room.

  “Ms. Barker?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am Mrs. Colville, the chief administrative officer at this installation. If you’ll come with me, we’ll get you processed, and then you can have dinner. First, may I have your car keys? What a nice dog.” She gave Daisy a pat.

  Holly handed the keys over, and Mrs. Colville walked outside for a moment, then returned. Holly followed the woman through a living room furnished with eighteenth-century American furniture, down a hallway and into an elevator, which took them down. They emerged into a perfectly ordinary open office floor divided into cubicles, with a row of private offices along one wall. Mrs. Colville showed her to a seat at a table, upon which rested a fairly thick file.

  “The file contains the rather extensive application and personal history that you filled out many weeks ago. You may review it, if you wish, and make any changes you feel are necessary for accuracy. Once you sign the sworn statement, at the end, the Agency will accept what you have entered, and you will be henceforth held responsible for its accuracy, in every respect, on penalty of perjury. Is that perfectly clear?”

  “Yes,” Holly replied. “I don’t feel the need to make any changes.” It was as accurate as she knew how to make it, except for the new bank account in Grand Cayman. She countersigned the document and handed it over.

  “Very well.” Mrs. Colville put what appeared to be a large identification card in front of her. “Please sign this, and we’ll get you photographed.”

  Holly signed it and was taken down a hallway to a bare-bones photo studio and photographed. Colville left the paperwork with the photographer and returned to her office with Holly, where she handed her a thick envelope. “This is a document explaining all of your obligations and rights as an employee, everything from the health plan to the pension plan to your legal rights. Please read the entire document carefully, then return it to this office, since you are not allowed to have in your possession, after leaving here, any document belonging to the Agency, except your identification card.”

  The photographer came in and handed Colville a leather wallet. She inspected the contents and handed it to Holly. “This is your identification,” she said. “From this moment, you are a probationary employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. When you have completed your course of training here, you will surrender this card and, if you have been successful, given new identification.” Colville took a sheaf of typed papers from her desk drawer and handed it to Holly. “This is your schedule for tomorrow; you will be given a new schedule each morning, so that training may be adapted to whatever your special needs may be.”

  “Thank you,” Holly said.

  Colville walked her to the elevator. “While we have been speaking, your car and everything in it is being searched. Your car will be garaged until you have finished your training. You won’t need it, since you are not allowed to leave the Farm during training. Your luggage will be delivered to your room presently, and in the meantime, I suggest you walk over to the dining hall, there,” she pointed out a barn, “and have dinner. Someone will escort you to your room after you’ve eaten. While you are here your code name will be Harry One,” she spelled it, “and you are not to tell anyone, neither your fellow trainees nor even an instructor, your real name. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” Holly said.

  Colville leaned over and patted Daisy. “You will remain Daisy” she said. “Good dog.” Daisy received this attention with gratitude.

  “Thank you.”

  “You may take her to the dining hall with you. When your luggage is returned, so will be her dog food, and you may feed her then.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Colville,” Holly said. She shook the woman’s hand and departed for the barn. During her short walk, she could not see anything that would reveal that the Farm was anything other than a farm. Even the parking lot didn’t look like a parking lot.

  She walked to a door in a corner of the barn and went inside. She was in a large dining hall with a cafeteria line down one wall. She served herself and took a table alone. The food was good, and no one joined her. When she had fini
shed dessert, a young man approached, as if on cue. “Harry One?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please follow me.” He led her to another long, low farm building, which turned out to be a dormitory. She was shown to a decent-sized room containing a queen-sized bed and a comfortable chair. A wall was fitted with built-in furniture: a desk, bookcase and television set. Her luggage was stacked, empty, in a corner, and when she looked she found that everything had been hung up or tucked into a drawer, except her gun, the gift from Ham. She didn’t ask about it.

  “I hope you’ll be comfortable here,” the young man said. “Attached to your schedule is a map showing the places you’ll need to go tomorrow.”

  “May I take my dog for a walk after she eats?” Holly asked.

  “Yes, but stay on the map. If you wander beyond that, you’ll be challenged, and the trespass will go in your record. Good night.”

  The young man left. Holly fed Daisy, took the map and went outside. There wasn’t much daylight left, so she exercised Daisy by throwing her ball, which got the job done in a hurry. When Daisy was finally tired, she returned to her room and began reading the document she had been given, then her schedule for the following day. That took much of the evening, and when she had finished, she watched the eleven o’clock news on TV, then went to bed.

  HER PHONE RANG at six a.m. “Yes?”

  The young man. “Breakfast now, your first class at seven. This is the last wakeup call you’ll get; from now on, you’re on your own as to schedule. Don’t be late for anything.” He hung up.

  Holly showered and changed into sweat clothes, as her schedule had dictated. She would miss her morning run today, and she’d have to ask about that. She fed Daisy, had breakfast in the dining hall, threw the ball for Daisy for a few minutes, then followed the map to her first class, which was in an auditorium below the dining hail. Daisy remained at her side.

  She took one of about two hundred seats, near the front. The room was less than a third full. At the stroke of seven o’clock, a lean, military-looking man of about sixty strode onto the stage and switched on a microphone at the podium.

  “My name, for the purposes of your visit here, is Hanks,” he said. “During the coming weeks or months, depending on the course of your training, you will come to hate me.”

  Somehow, Holly didn’t doubt him.

  “Most of you have been here for less than twenty-four hours,” Hanks said, “and it may have occurred to you that this installation has been designed to look like a farm, which it has been for a couple of hundred years. Particularly, it has been arranged to reveal none of its secrets in satellite photographs. Most of your classes will therefore be conducted underground.

  “For those who, after our physical training, still desire more exercise, there is a running path through the woods. You may not run in the company of more than one other person. There are also two tennis courts, one of them above ground. There is also an underground pool, which will be the site of special training for some of you as well as a recreational facility.

  “We discourage your getting to know other trainees; that is why you have each been assigned a code name. You are not to tell any other trainee anything about your personal or professional or educational background, or anything about how you were recruited. If you confine your conversations to the weather and other such innocuous subjects, you’ll be fine. If you are questioned by someone not on the staff seeking personal information, then lie.

  “In each of your rooms there are books and a television set with satellite service. You may entertain yourself, alone, in your room between dinner and bedtime. If you complete your training successfully, your assignments thereafter may involve long periods alone or with hostile companions. Learn to enjoy solitude.

  “There will be no question-and-answer period. Good luck.” Hanks stalked off the stage.

  Everyone sat still for a moment, waiting for further instructions. None came. Holly got up and started off for the first class on her schedule.

  THREE

  ROBERT KINNEY ARRIVED at his office at the Federal Bureau of Investigation promptly at nine a.m., still warm from the praise of the president at the news conference of the day before, announcing the resolution of the Theodore Fay affair, and from the extended sexual activity with his paramour, Nancy Kimble, following his proposal of marriage, which had been accepted.

  His secretary, Helen Frankel, was just hanging up the phone as he walked past her desk. “Stop where you are,” she ordered.

  Kinney stopped. “What?”

  “That was the White House on the phone. The president wishes to see you immediately.”

  “Right now?”

  “Mr. Kinney,” Helen said, sighing.

  “Okay, immediately is right now.”

  “There’ll be a White House car waiting for you by the time you get to the garage.”

  Kinney turned on his heel and headed for the garage. As he was entering the elevator, someone shouted his name. He turned to see one of his agents, Kerry Smith, walking rapidly toward him. “Later, Kerry,” he said, and the elevator door closed before Smith could reply.

  There was, indeed, a White House car waiting for him in the garage. He folded his six-foot-five-inch frame into the rear seat, and twenty minutes later he was sitting in the office of Cora Parker, the president’s secretary.

  “It won’t be long, Mr. Kinney,” Parker said. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Kinney replied.

  “As I recall, you take it black with a carcinogenic,” she said, walking to a coffee pot nearby.

  “I wouldn’t put it quite that way, but yes,” he replied.

  “That stuff will eat your insides out,” she said.

  “If that were true, Ms. Parker, I would have no insides.”

  She handed him the cup. “If you don’t have time to finish it here, just take it in with you,” she said.

  Kinney took a sip of the coffee, then looked up as the door to the oval office opened. His boss, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, stalked out of the office, red-faced and blinking rapidly. He glanced at Kinney, and his expression changed to one of hatred, then he was gone.

  “You may go in now, Mr. Kinney,” Parker said.

  Kinney stood up and tried to figure out what to do with his briefcase and the coffee in his hand. He set the coffee on her desk and walked into the Oval Office.

  William Henry Lee IV, president of the United States, stood up to greet him. “Good morning, Bob,” he said, extending a hand.

  Kinney shook it. “Good morning, Mr. President. I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”

  Lee waved him to a sofa and took a chair opposite him, while Cora Parker set down Kinney’s coffee on a table next to him.

  “Well, events move quickly sometimes,” the president said. “Once again, my congratulations on wrapping up the Fay affair so well.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Kinney didn’t bother with any self-deprecating talk about the teamwork involved, since he considered himself principally responsible for the outcome.

  “Anything new on the search for wreckage and a body?”

  So this was why he had been called over here, Kinney thought. “The Coast Guard has found numerous pieces of the wreckage, none bigger than the size of your hand. It was, apparently, a very powerful bomb. Chances are, the body is in pieces just as small and is fish food by now, so there’s not likely to be an autopsy.”

  “Bob, I’d like you to be the new director of the FBI,” Lee said, “effective immediately.”

  Kinney tried not to choke on his coffee. “Sir? Is James Heller ill?”

  “If he says he is. Figuratively speaking, he’s dead,” Lee replied. “I accepted his resignation five minutes ago for personal or health reasons. Whatever he decides. He’ll be out of the Hoover Building inside of an hour.”

  “I see,” Kinney said.

  “Do you accept?”

  “Mr. President, I’d like to k
now what my brief as director would be.”

  Lee gazed at him. “To shake the organization to its roots; to improve every facet of its operations, particularly criminal and terrorist investigations; to build bridges to the CIA and other intelligence organizations; to change its self-serving and standoffish culture with regard to those organizations and law enforcement agencies all over the country; to weed out the deadwood and promote the able. I think that about does it. Sound familiar?”

  Indeed it did, Kinney thought. It was virtually a quote from a memo the president had recently asked him to write to him. “It sounds very good, Mr. President. I’d be honored and very pleased to accept.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it,” Lee said. “I’ll be issuing a formal appointment today, and someone will be in touch to iron out the details. One other thing: in view of the constant threat of terrorist attack, I want your first order of business to be a thorough review of the Bureau’s own security, both in Washington and at every field office. I want it strengthened, where necessary. And I’ve decided that the director should live in secure government housing, so someone will be discussing a few choices with you. I hear you live in some awful bachelor digs, anyway, so I’m sure you’ll enjoy the change.”

  “Thank you, sir, I’m sure I will, especially since I’m planning to be married very soon.”

  “Who’s the lucky lady?”

  “Her name is Nancy Kimble. She lives in Chester, South Carolina, and I met her when I went down there to investigate Fay’s murder of Senator Wallace.”

  “Oh, the innkeeper you were bunking with?”

  Kinney blushed. “Sir?”

  “Relax, it was in your file. I think Heller took some pleasure in noting it.”

  Kinney gulped. “I see.”

  Lee shrugged. “Everybody’s entitled to a sex life, but don’t quote me as having said that; I’d be explaining for weeks.”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  Lee slapped his hands on the arms of his chair and stood up. “Well, why don’t you and I take a stroll down to the White House Press Room and surprise the boys and girls with an announcement, then you can get back to the Bureau and move into your new office.”