The fact they were here so quickly meant someone within the Beltway had an inkling of what was going on—and was shitting a brick.
Karl and Marty were in the hallway, almost to the conference room, when Marty stopped and turned to him. “They’re going to pretend this is routine. Keep your answers short.”
Karl nodded.
“You ready for this?”
Karl nodded again.
“Are you sure?” Marty said, as if to say, I personally am not sure.
“I was thinking I’d open with a joke about non-organic food. You know, let them know I share their concerns about what children today are putting in their bodies.”
Marty sighed angrily, like he’d been expecting this. “Well, you’d only have to make amends for it later. Isn’t that step five for you people?”
“Are you implying something?” Karl said. He sniffed his cup of coffee.
“Karl, I was speaking counterfactually. Are you telling me that today of all days, you put booze in your morning cup of…” Marty paused and glanced at the coffee as if there was a finger in it. Like most teetotalers, he was suspicious of alcohol and regarded other people’s attraction to it as a disease ranking somewhere between smoking-related lung cancer and pedophilia.
“Do you have a mint?” Karl said.
“You know, you don’t instill some confidence in these people, and they’ll appoint their own team of investigators here. And once they find Prometheus, they’ll go through our personal email, even our homes, to gather evidence against us.” Marty turned around to walk into the conference room.
“I got something yesterday,” Karl said.
Marty looked over to the conference room door to make sure no one was listening.
“I went to our John Doe’s apartment, and I found a picture of him with someone we know. Eric Reese. We checked, and they’re brothers, Marty.”
Marty’s face went blank. He looked away. “Why would Eric’s brother come here?”
“You don’t have a theory?”
Marty froze. “Are you working me, Karl?”
“I’m collaborating.”
“That’s nice. No, to answer your question, I don’t have a theory. But you better get one, quick.”
They watched each other for a moment. Then Marty backed into the conference room.
Karl took a few deep breaths and went over what he would say. Five minutes later he walked into the conference room. A dozen blank faces turned and looked at him, waiting to be impressed. There were two desk heads, their subordinates, a middle-aged woman Karl couldn’t place, and the deputy director from the director of the CIA’s office. No one introduced themselves.
Karl went to the front of the room. “I was brought in to find out who moved against Benjamin Kotesh and who ordered it. But we’ve had another development—”
“You mean in addition to a man who remains unidentified infiltrating, then busting out of, our embassy?” the director said.
“Yes, sir.”
Everyone just stared at him.
Karl went on. “Another man, Alan Sarmad, also tied to organized crime, has turned up in the mix. Our people have discovered that Sarmad has financial ties to Kotesh and to Jonathan Nast. Which is why we think that at this point we’re only seeing the pieces of a much-greater whole.”
“There isn’t time for this,” the director said. “Marty brought you in—over my objections, I might add—to find the man who jumped that roof and killed Kotesh, not to blow this investigation out to include anyone who’s ever done business with Kotesh.”
“I know that, sir. But I found something better to do.”
The director turned and looked at Marty—who, Karl knew, was in a delicate situation. The director didn’t outrank Marty morally, only formally, but he whispered in the ear of the man who did.
“Perhaps, sir,” Karl said, “you should hear the voicemails left for the John Doe who was posing as our agent.” He took out his phone and hit PLAY. “The voice you’re about to hear is Maximilian Winter. He’s a counterterrorism analyst for the German Federal Intelligence Service.”
In the voice people use with someone they’ve spoken to a hundred times, a man said:
“Tom, Max here, just following up. We assume you received those reports, and that all was in order. I know we discussed getting the imaging in the next quarter, but we’re wondering if we could move that up a month or two. Thank you. By the way, Gregor and I finally pulled the trigger! We’ll be in Washington in…oh…three months—I’ll get you the exact date!—and we’re really looking forward to meeting everyone. Talk soon. Ciao.”
“Just what the hell is that supposed to mean, ‘imaging’?” the director said.
“He’s referring to our satellite over Russia. In exchange for DNA reports on certain criminals, our John Doe promised the Germans access to images from our birds.”
Every face in the room got a stricken look.
“What?” the director said.
“He’s been doing this everywhere—using this office and posing as an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency to enter into agreements with police departments and intelligence services throughout Europe. They gave him DNA reports on people they’ve arrested who meet a certain profile, and he promised them access to our resources.”
No one was able to speak. Probably they were all busy imagining the moment when some well-meaning foreign bureaucrat showed up, having done his part, now expecting them to do theirs. Would they explain that technically there’d never been a deal because John Doe didn’t work for them or would they just give the man what he wanted because this was one of those things where anything is better than the truth?
“And what does this Max guy mean when he says he’s ‘looking forward to meeting everyone’?” the director asked.
“As additional incentive, John Doe has been promising people meetings with high-level US government officials. I have a voicemail from someone in the UK telling him he’s looking forward to visiting the White House next month and playing racquetball with the president.”
Someone in the room gasped.
“What in God’s name is going on?” the director said.
“John Doe used those DNA reports to identify three people who left DNA on a shirt in our possession. Those three people are Alan Sarmad, Jonathan Nast, and Benjamin Kotesh. All three guys we’ve connected financially.”
“What’s the upshot?”
“John Doe’s trying to find them for a reason, and the reason isn’t just them. It’s because they’re connected to something bigger than them.”
Karl didn’t elaborate on that. He just stood there, waiting for Marty to take the reins. He’d always enjoyed watching Marty negotiate the “society” part of the job.
“In light of what happened at the embassy,” Marty said, “we decided to task Karl exclusively with finding John Doe. But prior to that, Karl thought Alan Sarmad’s involvement was a loose string, so he pulled on it. Now he has reason to believe investigating Sarmad will lead him full-circle—to John Doe.”
“Then we should have been apprised of that,” the director said. “How close are you to getting something definitive?”
Marty thought a moment, like giving this man the most exact, most thorough answer was a matter of life or death. All eyes in the room turned to him. It was so quiet Karl could hear the air-conditioning.
“Close,” Marty said, and then he exhaled as though the thought that had gone into even this non-answer had exerted an almost physical toll on him.
“Can we expect something within forty-eight hours?”
Another pause, this one even more pregnant than the first. “Absolutely.”
And the deeply sincere way Marty said this told Karl that this man wouldn’t be getting a fucking thing from Marty in forty-eight hours. And probably not ever.
The director turned back to Karl. “Do we have any way of getting someone in to talk to Benjamin Kotesh?”
“He’s dead,” Marty sai
d.
“What?”
“It just came out. He was found beaten to death in his hospital room. A nurse leaked it to a tabloid, and they were forced to confirm.”
Karl remembered Tom’s fight with the Marines. Beating a man to death didn’t sound like his MO.
So who does it sound like?
Bogasian.
“‘Beaten to death,’” the director said. “Who would do such a thing?”
This is just the tip of the iceberg, Karl thought. If I were to explain to you what this someone is capable of, I can money-back guarantee one of you freaking people would make pee-pee in your pants.
The director snapped out of his thoughts and turned to Karl. “All right, so Kotesh is off the board. Let’s go back to one. What kind of ties are we talking about between Sarmad and the others?”
“Our analysts have linked them to companies we believe are under common control,” Karl said. “And the controlling entity, we believe, is Schroder-Sands.”
“The pharma company?” the woman Karl didn’t know said.
Karl nodded.
“They’re a public company.”
The director rocked up in his chair. “Schroder needs to go on the watch list immediately.”
Marty bunched his napkin up and pushed it as far out of his vicinity as was socially acceptable. He kept staring at it. Now the whole room was watching the napkin. Marty leaned forward and, with the very tip of his finger, pushed the napkin exactly two inches farther away.
“I think we should do the opposite,” he said without looking up.
The director swiveled his chair to look directly at him.
“Schroder is a perennial troublemaker,” Marty said. “Two years ago they were caught loading banned chemicals on an Iranian freighter sailing under a false Hong Kong flag. Of course everyone is sailing under a false Hong Kong flag, and what everyone in this room would love to know is whether Hong Kong is the pimp or the prostitute in these situations.”
Everyone chuckled knowingly.
“A few days ago,” Marty continued, “the federal prosecutor in Berlin launched an undisclosed investigation into Schroder and several of its subsidiaries. According to my source, it’s being coordinated with the tax authorities, which means it’s major and they’re looking for a conviction.”
Karl’s heartbeat picked up a couple beats. Marty hadn’t mentioned an investigation.
“Now suddenly Schroder shows up in the mix with a body count approaching double digits.” Marty looked up, engaged his audience. “Schroder is a go-between. Whatever they’re doing, they’re in the middle, same as Sarmad and the other men. Now the scary part: there’s a primary mover behind all this, and we still have no idea who that is.”
Marty shut up.
This, Karl knew, was one of Marty’s unwritten rules: never explain enough to be completely understood. The willingness to believe something increases with the fear one has already somehow missed it.
The director looked deep in thought. “What are you proposing?”
“That Schroder be treated as a source of intelligence, not as a hostile. And that we allow Karl to swim through this maze of subsidiaries and see where he surfaces. That means making contact with Alan Sarmad and using his absolute discretion to get the information we need.”
Karl was impressed—Marty didn’t even glance at him. Schroder-Sands was the company Marty had partnered with to keep Prometheus’s costs under the radar of congressional budget appropriators. They both knew more about that firm than they would ever let on this side of a courtroom.
The director looked at the woman. This was the second time he’d done it, and that told Karl who she was. She must work for the director of National Intelligence, the head of the entire US intelligence community. Even the director’s boss reported to her boss. And since her boss reported directly to the president, this meant that Marty’s quiet little investigation had drawn the interest of the White House.
“What are you going to tell the French?” the director asked.
“Nothing,” Marty said.
“They’re going to want something in exchange for operating in their country.”
“At this point we haven’t even told them Karl is in-country.”
The woman and the director both winced.
Marty didn’t seem to notice. “Europe is bankrupt,” he said. “The Europeans just don’t know it yet. They’re not going to like us doing anything that threatens the lifeblood of a major employer. And we can’t trust our counterparts in the intelligence community. The bureaucratic class here has grown into one of those morbidly obese shut-ins who require 500 calories an hour or they will pass out. And now that the neighbors are starving to death, fatty is desperate to justify each and every calorie. If we tell our counterparts here about this, they are going to create so much work for us it would make a Teamster blush.”
Everyone smiled at this except Karl. He was just watching everything unfold in mild awe.
The director was nodding. “But how do you use Karl in a way that keeps us off the front page of the New York Times?”
“If he resigns, that’s too easy to see through. I think we should terminate him for performance effective nine months ago. Then I want him hired retroactively as a Chinese-walled-up-to-his-colon contractor providing training for my group. And I want to know right now if anyone objects to it.”
No one said anything. And with that, Marty had sealed off whatever Karl reported to him from the rest of the CIA, the rest of the intelligence community, even from the president. And the son of a bitch had done it in the name of advancing everyone’s knowledge.
“Karl, I assume you’re on board with this?” Marty said.
Karl was quiet a moment. Marty asked for permission to do this, set him up to be disowned if needed, almost as an afterthought. Karl, if we encounter the wolves, I’m going to need to trip you, so they take you first. I assume you’re on board with this?
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll be like a pig in shit. Thank you for asking, Marty,” Karl said.
Marty stared at him for a moment and then cleared his throat. “Is there anything else?”
Karl opened his briefcase and took out photos he’d gotten late last night. He handed them to Marty, who passed them to the others.
“This is a shipping container leased to Schroder-Sands by a company associated with Alan Sarmad,” Karl said. “Someone at the company misplaced some customs paper, and they had to search inside.”
Karl waited for the director to get to the last picture and see what looked like a pair of shop-made leg irons. The irons had chains attached to them, and the chains snaked out of the light from the flash and disappeared into the unseen depths of the container.
“Jonathan Nast, the man whose body we just found in Paris, worked for Sarmad’s company. When customs asked him about this a month ago, he claimed to be a Schroder-Sands representative and said these chains were used to secure loose equipment. The port authority bought his story, but not before an employee snapped a picture with a cell phone.”
The director looked at the woman, then back at Karl. “What the hell are these people up to?”
“It appears they’re trying to move something—people—throughout Europe. And whatever they’re doing, it’s probably the reason our John Doe is killing them.”
He left out the last part.
There’s only one reason you use leg irons like those, and that’s to restrain someone who’s a danger to his handlers.
“When in the hell did you find out the Germans were investigating Schroder?” Karl asked Marty as they left the conference room.
“A few hours ago.”
“Is that why all these people are turning up dead? Is someone at Schroder trying to cover their tracks?”
“Schroder’s a public company now. They don’t have the balls to do something like this. I meant what I said: they’re just a middleman. It’s their principal that scares me.”
“Shit.”
“Yes.”
“But they don’t have anything that implicates the CIA. The people at Schroder only knew us, not the agency. There’s no connection for the investigators to find, right?”
“That’s the way it starts out.”
Marty’s phone buzzed. He checked it quickly, but then he stayed there, staring at the screen. He looked up. “Come over here.”
They went to another conference room. Marty shut the door and turned on the TV to the BBC. A newswoman sat behind a desk, looking into the camera as she spoke. In the corner of the screen, there were stills from black-and-white security cameras. Karl recognized the man in them: Benjamin Kotesh.
“Again the stills you’re seeing are from video taken three years ago at a Paris hospital. It appears Benjamin Kotesh, recently deceased, was seen here stealing the bodies of fetuses that had been aborted, some as recently as fifteen minutes before he arrived to take their remains.”
A new picture came up. This one showed Kotesh in a parking lot with a second man, whose face was hidden by a baseball cap. Karl was looking at himself three years ago. He remembered everything, the parking lot, the car he’d driven there, even the heartburn he’d had from some gruesome German street meat he’d eaten beforehand.
Marty leaned toward the screen. “Is that…is that you?”
“Of course not.”
Anchor: “Authorities are looking for two suspected accomplices. One of them is this man seen here in the parking lot with Kotesh, and the other is a man named Alan Sarmad. Sarmad is believed to have employed Kotesh over the last three years.”
Marty turned to Karl. “This is cancer.” He shook his head. “Never mind what you told those compliance monkeys in there. Where are you really with finding Tom Reese or Bogasian?”
“We’re making progress.”
“‘Making progress’ is what weak, stupid people say they’re doing when really they’re just playing house. Tell me you have a lead that’s tangible.”
I have nothing remotely tangible, Karl thought.
“We’re searching Nast’s hard drive,” he said.
“And that’s it? Jesus Christ.”
The Prometheus Man Page 13
