Iron Orchid

by Stuart Woods

  “Neither can I,” Holly said. “I had been expecting at least a few more weeks of training. I hope we know enough.”

  She got into the car and started it, and Sally climbed in.

  “My pulse is up,” Sally said, holding three fingers to her neck.

  “So is mine,” Holly said. She put the car in gear and headed for the gate.

  TWENTY

  TEDDY SPENT THE DAY at home, resting after his Herculean efforts to make and deliver the bomb, and flipping from channel to channel on TV, watching the reports that came in. Before dinner, he called Irene on her secret cell phone.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Mike. Are you indoors?”

  “Yes.”

  “Walk out into your garden before you speak again.”

  There was a thirty-second pause, then she came back on the line. “I’m outside.”

  “Have you watched the TV reports?”

  “Yes, and there’s talk of nothing else at the office.”

  “I succeeded beyond my dreams, let me tell you. I think there may already have been explosives in the house, and my device set them off.”

  “That’s what they figure at the office, too. There’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “They think they know who did it.”

  “Are they right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I expected they would figure it out.”

  “They’re changing all the entry codes for the computer databases,” she said. “It won’t be possible to call in and download without them.”

  “Can you get them for me?”

  “I think so; it may take me a few days.”

  “Be careful. Don’t put yourself at risk.”

  “It’s worth a risk, if you can keep doing this sort of thing. Can you imagine the mess if those people had been able to pull off what they were planning?”

  “I’m glad to have been able to stop them, but it’s equally important to me that you not be found out. Please respect my wishes in that regard.”

  “Oh, all right. I’ll be careful.”

  “I’ll check in with you before or after work in a day or two, to see if you’ve made any progress.”

  “Okay. I’ll do the best I can.”

  “It was good talking to you. Goodbye.” He hung up. Any doubts he may have had about whether they were onto him had now been resolved. “Okay,” he said aloud, “the game is on.”

  HOLLY PASSED THE FRONT of the building she had been looking for in the east Forties, turned into the steep ramp leading down to the garage and was stopped by what appeared to be a heavy steel door. There was an intercom box with a keypad and a bell button outside her window, so she rolled it down and pressed the button.

  “State your name,” a metallic-sounding voice said.

  “Holly Barker.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “No, Sally Liu is with me, and my dog, Daisy.”

  “Read aloud the last four digits of your personal serial numbers; they’re on the back of your I.D. cards.”

  Both women got out their cards, and Holly read the numbers.

  “Proceed into the garage. You’ll be met and directed to a parking space. Step out of the car with your hands away from your body and stand still.” The steel door rolled up, and another, steel mesh door behind that rolled up, too.

  Holly drove slowly into the garage and saw two men waving her into a parking space. She and Sally got out of the car and the two men searched them with electronic wands and took their firearms. “These will be returned to you upstairs,” one of the men said, “and your luggage will be delivered to your rooms. Please take the elevator to the lobby and report to the man at the desk.”

  Holly, Sally and Daisy rode up two floors in the elevator and got out. They were in what appeared to be the lobby of an apartment building. Ahead of them in the marble-lined lobby was a reception desk, and two men in doormen’s uniforms were behind the chest-high counter.

  “Good afternoon,” one of the men said. “Ms. Barker and Ms. Liu and, I believe, Daisy?”

  “That’s right,” Holly said.

  The man placed a clipboard on the counter. “Please sign in.”

  Holly and Sally signed and noted the time of their arrival.

  The man handed them keys. “Your rooms are on the sixth floor, and your luggage and weapons will be delivered there shortly, after your bags have been searched. There will be a meeting in the twelfth-floor conference room at five p.m. Please do not leave the building before that time.”

  “I’ll need to take my dog outside for a couple of minutes,” Holly said.

  “Very well, but stay within a hundred feet of the building and within sight of the doorman.”

  They took the elevator to the sixth floor, which was like that of an ordinary apartment building, and found their rooms next door to each other. Holly’s room was a small studio apartment. She had a bedroom with a sitting area, a kitchenette and a bathroom with a shower. It was much like a medium-priced hotel room. The windows looked out onto Second Avenue, and she was impressed that she heard zero traffic noise.

  She took Daisy downstairs and allowed her to relieve herself near the building, and when she came back, her bags had been delivered and her weapons were on the bed. She unpacked, then switched on the TV and watched reports of the bombing on the news channels until five o’clock. Then she collected Sally, and they rode up to the twelfth floor and were directed to the conference room, which contained a large table and two dozen chairs. The other three members of their team were there, and a moment later, looking tired, Lance Cabot walked into the room.

  “Please be seated,” he said, “and we’ll begin the briefing.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  LANCE SAT DOWN WEARILY at the head of the conference table.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Those of you who have just arrived, welcome to New York. Ladies and gentlemen of the FBI, welcome to the CIA.

  “This building is the new headquarters of the New York City station of the recently formed counterterrorist arm of the directorate of operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. We bought the building when it was under construction and added many, ah, improvements. For instance, the exterior walls are clad with two half-inch layers of armor, one of steel, one of Kevlar. The exterior cladding and the interior drywall are installed over that; the windows facing the streets are two-inch-thick armored glass, so that you may feel safe in your beds. Those of you who do not already live in New York are being housed here temporarily, until you learn something of the city and are ready to move into quarters of your own choosing, which you may not choose until the location and other attributes have been approved by our chief of security.

  “There is no smoking anywhere in this installation. Meals are served continuously in our own restaurant on the penthouse floor, one above us. Laundry and dry cleaning may be left at the front desk; there is a laundry room in subbasement one, and a garage in subbasement two. Communications, technical services and the armory are in subbasement three, well underground.

  “The building is as secure as we can possibly make it, with cameras and audio pickups practically everywhere. You will be admitted to the building only after you have properly identified yourselves, and you are not to have visitors without a written pass from the chief of security’s office, which will not be given lightly.

  “Each of you will be issued a rather special personal telephone which operates on both cell and satellite systems and which has a GPS capability, so that you can be tracked, when necessary. You are to carry it on your person at all times, set to vibrate, and you are never to turn it off, so carry at least two backup batteries. You are not to lose it; I hope that is perfectly clear.”

  Lance took a deep breath. “Now, let me tell you why you are here. Last year a man retired from the Technical Services Department of the Agency. I expect you’ve heard of him: his name was Theodore Fay.”

  Everyone shifted expectantly in the
ir seats.

  “Teddy Fay was a genius at his work. At one time or another in a career of forty years or so, he worked in every division of Tech Services-documents, communications, weapons, electronic surveillance-and he excelled in each one of them. For the last ten years of his career, he served as a Tech Services coordinator-an outfitter, as the field agents call them. It was his job to equip a field agent with clothing, documents, weapons, communications devices, maps-everything he or she could possibly need.

  “When Teddy retired, he kept busy by faking his own death and disappearing from the face of the earth. At the same time, he caused to disappear every photograph and every record of his employment by the agency that ever existed. After he dematerialized, he began killing people whose politics he disagreed with-all right-wing political figures. You’ve read about those killings, of course, and seen the TV news reports.

  “Finally, or almost finally, he retreated to a well-prepared hideout on a Maine island, but the FBI tracked him there and surrounded the place. But Teddy also had a well-prepared escape route. He got out, walked to the little airfield on the island and flew himself out. At the behest of the FBI the president ordered two navy jets into the air to pursue him and force him down or shoot him down. Before they could accomplish their mission, Teddy exploded his own aircraft and himself with it.

  “There the story was thought to have ended, but a search turned up fragments of the airplane that indicated that he had escaped. He stole some things from a vacant beach house, made his way first to Boston, then to Atlantic City, then he disappeared. The news of his survival has been kept secret from the public and most of the Congress, to avoid tipping Teddy off that he’s being pursued again.

  “Yesterday, as you know, there was an explosion in a townhouse not far from here. Our people had the building under surveillance, and they photographed this man delivering a package and departing.” He pressed a remote control, and a series of photographs appeared on the screen. “We believe him to be Teddy Fay. He is about five feet, ten inches tall and weighs about a hundred and sixty pounds. He is balding, but often wears wigs, along with false beards and mustaches. He is otherwise hirsute, if his forearms are any indication. That’s all we’ve got. The photographs you are looking at are the only ones of him that exist, if indeed, they are of him.

  “The president has ordered the director of the FBI and the director of Central Intelligence to create a combined task force to find and arrest Teddy Fay. The people in this room are the task force, along with all the support personnel you require. The task force has two leaders: me, representing the CIA, and Special Agent Kerry White- stand up, Kerry-representing the FBI.”

  Kerry White, at the other end of the table, stood briefly, waved and sat down again.

  “I expect you’ve heard a lot about how American intelligence and American law enforcement need to be working more closely together” Lance continued. “This task force is the result of that need. Each CIA officer will be paired with an FBI special agent, and you will work as coequal partners. You will both report to both Kerry and me. No CIA officer is to withhold any information from his partner or from Kerry. Does anyone here question that?”

  Nobody said anything.

  “Any of my people question that?” Kerry Smith asked.

  Nobody did.

  “Kerry is going to bring us up to date on the latest information on Teddy Fay,” Lance said. “Kerry?”

  Kerry pushed back from the table. “The story of this bombing, as far as we know it, will give you a nutshell description of how Teddy is able to operate,” he said. “He somehow learned that the CIA was surveiling a townhouse where, it was suspected, a terrorist team was being sheltered, before a planned attack on the U.N. head-estate conference that begins tomorrow morning and lasts two days. Teddy understood that, since most or all of the people in the town-house had the diplomatic protection of Iran’s U.N. embassy, there was not much that could be done except to surveil them and hope to catch them in the act, so he took it upon himself to remove the threat. He did an outstanding job, though he was probably helped by the presence of explosives already in the building.

  “First, though, Teddy had to obtain the explosives. This is how we think he did it: he hacked into the FBI’s computer databases to learn the locations of C- 4 in New York City, then he hacked into CIA computers and created for himself FBI identification and letterheads, then created a letter from the director to the New York City agent in charge, directing that four pounds of C-4 be surrendered to an agent named Curry-this was Teddy, himself-for delivery to Washington as evidence in a federal trial. I’ve seen the letter, and it is perfect in every respect.

  “He then built his bomb and hand-delivered it to the building. We don’t know why they accepted delivery or what they did to inspect the package before it exploded, but the thing worked. Everything Teddy does seems to work.

  “The CIA has since changed the access codes to their computers, and so has the Bureau, so we will at least have robbed him of those resources. We have also been back and reinterviewed every person we first talked to when Teddy was killing right-wing political figures, and we have come up with one shred of information that might have some small importance: Teddy Fay loves the theater and the opera. That’s it. That’s all we have.

  “I need hardly tell you that we are at a disadvantage; we are up against an opponent who is smarter than all of us, with the possible exception of Lance and me.” Kerry permitted himself a smile. “We cannot rely on him to make a mistake, because, to the best of our knowledge, he has never made a mistake.”

  A man in a suit spoke up. “If he didn’t make any mistakes, how did you find him in Maine?”

  Kerry sighed. “A federal prisoner, a former CIA officer, read about the murders and offered information in exchange for a pardon. The prisoner had a summer home on the Maine island that Teddy chose for his hideout, and several years ago saw him at the post office and recognized him. So, the prisoner got his pardon and the reward, and we got Teddy’s hideout. Unfortunately, we didn’t get Teddy. So, you see, Teddy didn’t make a mistake. We found him because of a coincidence.”

  “Who here knows something about the opera?” Lance asked. Nobody moved. “Oh, come on. Somebody must know something about the opera. You’re not all philistines, are you?”

  Holly slowly raised her hand. “I sometimes listen to the Saturday afternoon broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera,” she said. “I like the opera; I just don’t know a lot about it.”

  An FBI agent in a suit across the table from hex raised his hand. “I sometimes listen to those broadcasts, too, and I’ll watch PBS if an opera is televised. I’ve been to the opera a couple of times. That’s about it for me.”

  “Okay,” Lance said, “you two are partners; you’re the Opera Patrol. Teddy likes the theater, too, but there are too many theaters in New York for us to cover. The opera is pretty much contained in the New York City Opera company and the Metropolitan Opera company. Get on it.”

  After the meeting broke up, the FBI agent approached Holly. “I’m Tyler Morrow,” he said, extending his hand. “How do you do?”

  “Hi, Tyler,” she said, looking him up and down, at the sharply pressed blue suit and the shiny shoes. She judged him to be in his late twenties. “I’m Holly Barker. You’re going to fit right in at the opera.”

  “Thank you,” he replied. “I hope you will, too.”

  He didn’t crack a smile, but Holly thought she had just been speared.

  TWENTY-TWO

  AT EIGHT O’CLOCK on Monday morning, prior to his daily intelligence briefing, President Will Lee convened a meeting of the congressional leadership of both parties in the Oval Office, along with the director of Central Intelligence and the director of the FBI. When they had all been served coffee and pastries he welcomed them.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” Will said. “I’ve asked you here this morning to impart to you some news that you will not like, as I do not. You will recal
l that recently, at a White House press conference, I announced that the aircraft flown by Theodore Fay during his escape from Maine had exploded and that Mr. Fay was presumed dead. Not long after that announcement an examination of the wreckage of that aircraft revealed that Fay had probably parachuted from the airplane on the coast of Maine. Later, it was discovered that someone had broken into a nearby beach cottage and stolen some items, and still later, a parachute was discovered buried in the garden of that cottage. So it now seems clear that Mr. Fay is alive.”

  “Why haven’t we heard about this on the news?” the speaker of the House asked.

  “That’s why we’re here today,” the president said. “The directors of the FBI and the CIA have asked that we not announce that Fay is still alive.”

  “Why not?” the speaker asked.

  “Bob, you want to explain that?” the president asked Kinney.

  “Mr. Speaker, we feel that, because of the lack of photographs of Fay, along with his ability to disguise himself, it is unlikely in the extreme that an ordinary citizen could identify him, and we do not want to be flooded with false sightings by the public.”

  “I concur in that opinion,” Kate Lee interjected.

  “So why are we here?” the speaker asked.

  “Mr. Speaker,” Will said, “I didn’t want you to think that I was withholding information from you.”

  The majority leader of the Senate raised his hand. “Question for Director Kinney,” he said. “Does this mean that we can expect Fay to resume killing people in Washington?”

  “I am not ready to draw that conclusion,” Kinney replied.

  “Do we have to wait until one of us is murdered before you draw that conclusion?” the majority leader asked.

  “It appears that Mr. Fay has taken up residence somewhere in the New York City area,” Kinney said. “We believe he was responsible for the bombing of the Iranian townhouse in New York yesterday.”