Iron Orchid

by Stuart Woods

  “Doesn’t sound like my sort of place, anyway,” Holly said. “Should I just stay on the reservation, then?”

  “It’s a free country, more or less, so go wherever you feel comfortable. But you must remember that Whitey is probably as good a street fighter as anyone alive, and he knows lots of ways to maim and kill. If you should come face to face with him, and he looks like making a move, my advice is to shoot him.”

  Holly laughed, but Lance didn’t. “I’ll keep that in mind. Am I authorized to go about Virginia armed?”

  “Your I.D. card will work with the local and state police. Of course, when your training is over you’ll be given I.D. that specifically authorizes you to carry anywhere in the United States and its possessions.”

  “Can I have my nine-millimeter back?”

  “I’ll tell Sarge to give it to you, but don’t let the other trainees know; they’ll feel left out. It’s only because I trust your judgment that you’re getting the gun back.”

  “Thank you, Lance.”

  “Sarge was impressed with the gun.”

  “My dad built it. You’ll have to meet him sometime.”

  “I’ve read his army service record and his record with us in Vietnam. I wish he were working for me.”

  “Not much chance of that while there are still fish to catch.”

  Lance looked at his watch. “You must excuse me; I have a meeting. By the way, the deputy director for Operations saw the tape of your interaction with Whitey; he told me to be sure and hang on to you.” He gave her a little wave and walked back toward the main house.

  Holly was aglow from the praise.

  TEDDY DROVE HIS RENTAL CAR down to Manassas Airport, a small Virginia general aviation airfield, and drove slowly along the chain-link fence at its perimeter. He passed a series of hangars and paid particular attention to two of them: one that the FBI had learned about when they were pursuing him and one that they still didn’t know about, he hoped. He had kept the ill-fated Cessna there, and when he had flown it away, he’d left his RV there. Now he wanted it back.

  There was only one way to find out the status of his second hangar, and that was to drive right up to it. He let himself in through the back gate, using the keypad code, and drove to the hangar. He took a remote control from his pocket and pressed the button with one hand while holding a pistol in the other. The bi-fold door rose, and the interior lights came on. The RV was still there, and the hangar was deserted. He drove inside and closed the door.

  A cursory inspection of the hangar revealed that no one had entered it since he had left. He unlocked the RV and stepped inside. It was in disarray, since he had loaded as much of his equipment as possible into it from the other hangar. He spent an hour tidying it up, then he hitched the rental car to the RV and drove out of the hangar, towing the car, closing the door behind him.

  He drove all the way back to New York, turned in his rental car and found a garage near his workshop. He would transfer much of his equipment from the RV to the workshop over the next few days, so as not to attract attention, then he would be fully set up and ready to go to work. All he needed now was his first target.

  He went back to his apartment and fell into bed, exhausted. He had some catching up on his sleep to do.

  FIFTEEN

  THREE DAYS LATER, Teddy called Irene’s cell phone. “Yes?” she said, sounding businesslike.

  “Bad time?”

  “Two hours,” she said and hung up.

  Teddy waited two and a half, then called her back. “Better?”

  “Yes, it’s all right,” she said.

  “Where are you?”

  “At the Waldorf Towers.”

  “Are you free for a while?”

  “I have another meeting at five.”

  Teddy checked his watch. Just past one. “Take a cab to Fifth Avenue and Sixty-fourth Street and enter Central Park there. Turn right at the bottom of the steps, go around the administration building, then turn right again and leave the zoo area. Keep to the path, then sit down on the fifth bench on your right. Take a newspaper, so you can read while you wait. When you’re sure nobody has followed you, take off your right shoe and rub your foot. If you think it may not be safe, take off your left shoe.”

  “Got it.”

  “Go in fifteen minutes.” Teddy hung up. He thought he would entertain Irene; she had always loved the cloak-and-dagger side of Agency work, but she had not been able to become a field agent. He left his workshop, walked down to 64th Street, crossed Park and went into the Plaza Athenee Hotel. At the registration desk he asked for a deluxe double room, paid with a credit card and asked for two keys.

  “Where is your luggage, sir?” the woman asked.

  “The airline lost it; I’m told it will be delivered this evening.”

  “Do you require any personal items, toiletries?”

  “Thank you, no.” Teddy went up to the room, checked it out, then bought a newspaper and walked toward Fifth Avenue. He walked around the corner, checking everyone on each side of the street, turned East on 65th, waited a moment, then walked back down Fifth to 63rd, checking again. Then he waited near the corner until he saw Irene get out of a taxi.

  Since he knew where she was going, he didn’t need to follow her closely. He hung a block or so back, looking for suspicious vehicles or persons. He spent a couple of minutes being amused by the seals in the zoo, then walked north away from the zoo. He saw her from a hundred yards, reading a paperback book. When he was fifty yards away, she took off her right shoe and massaged her foot, then put her shoe back on. Teddy walked past her, then sat down on the next bench and opened his newspaper. He read quietly for five minutes, then took the Arts section, folded it to expose the crossword puzzle and began to work it. When he was sure there was no one near the bench, he spoke up.

  “When I leave, pick up the newspaper and read for ten minutes. There’s a key card for room 710 at the Plaza Athenee Hotel, Sixty-fourth between Madison and Park. Meet me there.”

  “Got it,” she said.

  Teddy tucked the crossword under his arm and, leaving the rest of the paper on the bench, left, walking north.

  ____________________

  TEDDY WAITED FOR HER in bed, looking forward to her arrival. She let herself into the room, leaving a trail of clothing behind her, then crawled into bed with him, snuggling close and throwing a leg over his. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi, yourself.”

  They played with each other for an hour, exploring every crevice and orifice, then copulated at length. She came twice before they managed it together.

  “WOW,” she said.

  “Wow, indeed.”

  “I should have joined you when you retired.”

  “Then you’d be a fugitive. It would be easier to find two of us, instead of one. You wouldn’t like the life.”

  “I like this,” she said, snuggling again.

  “So do I. How has your visit to New York gone?”

  “Very well. We’re here to meet with U.N. officials about providing counterespionage for their security. There’s a meeting of heads of state on Monday, and they’re nervous.”

  “And what have you found to report to them?”

  “We were asked late to the game, but Hugh came loaded for bear.”

  “What did he give them?”

  “There’s a suspected terrorist cell working out of a townhouse near the U.N. owned by an Iranian businessman. Actually, he’s an Iranian intelligence officer, and the whole operation is supported by Iranian money. His service is loyal to the mullahs, not the elected government. We’ve got the place bugged, and a full-time translation team on the tapes.”

  “What is the group planning?”

  “They’ve been very careful, so we’re not sure, but we think they’re going to try something during the meeting on Monday. The president is addressing the General Assembly at eleven a.m.”

  “So the Secret Service will be all over this?”

  “You bet th
ey will; already are.” She got out of bed. “Oh, I have something for you.” She took a small digital camera from her handbag, extracted a card from it and handed it to Teddy, then got back in bed.

  “What’s on this?” he asked.

  “Plans of the building,” she said. “I photographed them.”

  “That was very dangerous.”

  “Not really. I was left alone with them.”

  “These should be very interesting,” Teddy said. “Do you know anything about their security?”

  “It’s run by another Iranian.” She wrote down a name and the address of the building on a bedside notepad and handed it to Teddy.

  “Do you know what their procedure is for accepting deliveries?”

  “No one is allowed inside the building. Any deliveries are signed for on the front stoop by an armed guard, then taken down to the outside door of the basement. Presumably, packages are screened there.”

  “Who delivers?”

  “Gristedes grocery store on Third Avenue, FedEx, UPS, messenger services. It’s not hot and heavy; they get no more than two or three items a day. We’ve had some indication that packages addressed to their head of security are not routinely searched. He comes to the basement and opens them himself.”

  “And his name?”

  She wrote it down for him.

  He turned and kissed her. “You’re a peach.”

  “Go get ‘em!” she said, kissing him back.

  SIXTEEN

  ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, the training class was called into the auditorium, where they were addressed by the director of training.

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “You may have noticed that your ranks have been noticeably depleted since we last met in this room. Some of your classmates have not met the standards we set here or have failed their polygraphs or have otherwise not survived our security checks. Should you ever encounter any of these people in the outside world, the procedure is to not know them. If you are approached by one of them simply say you’re sorry, but they’ve made a mistake; you have never met. If they persist, disengage them- rudely, if necessary. If they still persist, report the incident to your case officer at the earliest possible moment, giving a full description of the person and the name he or she is using.

  “We’d like you to know that those of you who have survived the initial training have all done well, and we are pleased with your performance. As a reward, you’ll have a pass to leave the installation tomorrow night, between the hours of six p.m. and twelve midnight. You must have checked in at the front gate by midnight, no exception. Failure to do so will result in appropriate action up to and including expulsion from the training program.

  “There are other requirements: you are to travel in pairs or threes, and only with people from your training subgroup-Johns, Harrys, etcetera. Each of you will be given an envelope containing a valid driver’s license from one of the fifty states, two credit cards and one or two other forms of identification, along with a written legend. You will memorize the legend and use only that name, even among yourselves, while you are off the installation. Feel free to embroider your legend, but use only those facts that you can remember, in line with the training you have had. If any person on the outside shows too great an interest in your background, you are to report it to my office. When you return to the installation, you are to resume your normal form of address, by subgroup.

  “Your movements are restricted to the county, and you will be given a map of the county. You are not to contact any person-even friends or family-during the time off the installation, or to make any phone calls, land line or cell. You may take a cell phone with you, but it is to be used only to contact the duty officer, whose number you will be given, or to call 911 in the event of an emergency. If you receive a call from the duty officer’s number, you may answer it or return the call immediately and follow explicitly any instructions you are given.

  If you should have an encounter with law enforcement, you are to stick to your legend, unless you are otherwise identified by fingerprints or your identity comes into question and you are unable to talk your way out of the situation. In that case, call the duty officer, and someone will deal with the situation.

  “Finally, you are to conduct yourselves as responsible citizens. You are not to get drunk, commit traffic violations or otherwise break the law. Any questions?” He looked around the room. There were none. “Pick up your envelopes at the rear of the auditorium, and do not leave the installation until you have committed your legends to memory.”

  The group left their seats and lined up to receive their envelopes. Holly took hers and repaired to her room. She ripped open the fat envelope and spread the contents on her bed. She found a wallet; maps of the county, of Virginia, and of the District of Columbia; a college transcript showing her to have graduated from Georgetown University with a B.A. in elementary education and a typed, six-page document that was a detailed biography of one Helen Bransford.

  She opened the wallet and found the promised driver’s license and credit cards, along with a voter’s registration card for Washington, D.C, and a laminated ID. card identifying her as a teacher at a private school in D.C. She also found a Virginia license to carry a concealed weapon, giving an address in Floyd, Virginia, the home of Bransford’s parents. There was a map of D.C, with the address of Bransford’s apartment in Georgetown marked on it. Holly began reading the legend, memorizing items as she went. She read it three times, then recited all the relevant names aloud.

  There was a knock on the door, and Harry Three opened the door. “Hi, you’ve got a car, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I go out with you tomorrow tonight? I’m without wheels.”

  “Sure.”

  The woman walked into the room and stuck out her hand. “I’m Lee Wan,” she said, spelling the last name. “I’m from New York. Chinatown, to be exact.”

  “I’m Helen Bransford,” Holly said, shaking her hand.

  “I hear there’s a hot spot down the road called Buster’s,” Lee said. “Want to try it?”

  Holly shook her head. “I’ve been warned off the place,” she said. “Maybe you’d better ride with somebody else.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” Lee said. “Why don’t we try the Holiday Inn? I hear there’s a restaurant and a piano bar.”

  “That sounds good,” Holly said. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot tomorrow night at seven?”

  “Sounds great.”

  Holly went back to her legend, going through it twice more.

  SEVENTEEN

  TEDDY FINISHED putting all his equipment away, then vacuumed the floor of his workshop. He was ready to go to work.

  First, he spent an hour on the computer, hacking into the FBI’s counterintelligence files and locating the sources of various explosives in the New York City area. He was, in effect, working the Feds’ system backward: they would use these files to track down perpetrators in the event of a terrorist attack; he was using them to locate the explosives.

  He found many sources for dynamite, mostly construction companies, but only four for plastic explosives, three of them military. Stealing from the military was too complicated for his current purposes, so Teddy zeroed in on the fourth source: the evidence depository of the New York field office of the FBI. This would be much simpler.

  He hacked into the files of his old department at the CIA, which bore the innocuous name of Technical Services. From those files he downloaded templates for an FBI I.D. and for the Bureau’s stationery. He spent another hour building an I.D., then he inserted the I.D. into the Bureau’s central files. He printed out several sheets of the stationery, taking care to get the watermark right.

  Then he wrote a letter to the agent in charge of the New York field office. He made the letterhead the personal stationery of the new director of the FBI, Robert Kinney, then downloaded a copy of Kinney’s signature from the files and affixed it to the letter. As a final touch, he downloaded the temp
late of a rubber approval stamp from the Agent in Charge’s office, stamped the letterhead and affixed a copy of the AIC’s signature to the space provided.

  TWO HOURS LATER, Teddy entered the Federal Building in Foley Square and, following a plan from the Bureau’s files, made his way to the subbasement where the field office’s evidence room was located. He presented his I.D. to the clerk, who wiped the card through a reader that checked the bar code against the Bureau’s central files, then handed it back to him.

  “What can I do for you, Special Agent Curry?” the clerk asked.

  Teddy produced the letter from the director ordering the AIC to produce four pounds of C-4 explosive and a box of detonators from the evidence room, to be transported to D.C. as evidence in a trial. The letter was stamped and endorsed by the AIC.

  “That’s a lot of that stuff to be carrying around,” the clerk said.

  “Yeah, that’s why we’re doing it on a Saturday night,” Teddy replied. “We’ve got a secure van outside, and a King Air waiting at Teterboro to take it back and deliver it to the U.S. Attorney.”

  The clerk disappeared through a door, and Teddy began casing the place for escape, if he needed to. The wait became interminable, and Teddy was starting to worry. Then the clerk appeared, carrying a cheap, leather catalogue case and set it on the counter. “There you are, Mr. Curry,” he said. “Four pounds of C-4, complete with detonators. Just get it out of the building before you let it explode.” He offered a clipboard. “Sign here, please.”

  Teddy opened the case and checked the contents, then signed. Ten minutes later he was on a subway, headed uptown.

  BACK IN HIS WORKSHOP, Teddy went back into the Agency’s files for information on the head of security, Ali Hakim, at the East Side townhouse. He located a fairly complete biography, which yielded the information that Hakim, like many Arabs, was nuts about horses. Excellent, he thought.