by Ben Coes
Dellenbaugh looked at his wife, then Murphy, and finally Weese.
“Tim Lindsay was killed in Paris,” he said.
“Per protocol, Mr. President,” said Brubaker, “we’re removing you from your present location and getting you airborne. Adrian is letting Senator Vilas know.”
Adrian King was the White House chief of staff.
“Has anyone spoken with Debbie Lindsay?” said President Dellenbaugh.
“Yes,” said Brubaker. “Vice President Donato called her.”
“Has it leaked?”
“No, sir,” said Brubaker.
“Get John on this immediately. I want a statement in my hands within the next ten minutes. Keep it short.” John Schmidt was the president’s communications director.
“Yes, sir.”
“Now tell me everything we know, Josh.”
“Hector has been the point of contact with French authorities. He’s going to join us as soon as he gets off the line with them. It should be momentarily, Mr. President.”
33
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY
Hector Calibrisi stood behind his desk on the seventh floor of CIA headquarters, tucked into the corner of the building, its walls made almost entirely of glass. Four individuals were with him. Luke Brennan, Langley’s general counsel, was seated on one of two chairs in front of Calibrisi’s desk. On the couch against the wall, Bill Polk, head of National Clandestine Services, was next to one of his two deputies, Mack Perry, who ran the Special Operations Group. Angie Poole, the other NCS deputy, who oversaw the Special Activities Division, was standing near the window, pacing back and forth. In her hand was a cell phone, which she was listening to with her hand over the microphone.
A large rectangular phone sat atop Calibrisi’s desk, its speaker on.
Calibrisi was on a call with Bernard Cazanove, the head of DGSI. It was their third conversation in the last hour.
France’s internal security and intelligence wing was similar to the FBI, charged with safeguarding France from all manner of threat. For the most part, this meant terrorism. DGSI was at the front edge of France’s efforts to stem the tidal wave of radical Islamists inside its own borders. It was a battle the country was losing. France, and Paris in particular, had become a vital entry point for jihadis intent on penetrating Europe, the UK, and, eventually, Canada. America, of course, was the ultimate objective, but America was accessed through Canada, and Canada through France.
Angie Poole was linked into White House Control, where Josh Brubaker was patched into the limousine carrying President Dellenbaugh.
Calibrisi’s tie was loosened and his top shirt button undone. The atmosphere in the office was tense; everyone was in shock, not only at Lindsay’s murder but also at the accusation being leveled by Cazanove, namely, that Dewey Andreas was involved.
Cazanove was speaking, his French accent lilting and aristocratic.
“It was his sidearm. A Colt .45 M1911A1, with some kind of tape wrapped around the butt.”
Calibrisi shook his head.
“Have you run the prints? Ballistics?” he asked.
“It happened less than an hour ago, Hector. We will run the prints, the ballistics, and every other bit of evidence we find. In the meantime, Andreas is in our custody and we’re going to ask him some questions.”
“Someone is setting him up. He wouldn’t kill Tim Lindsay.”
“People change,” said Cazanove.
“Bernard, it might be his gun, and you might think you have proof. But Dewey wouldn’t kill the secretary of state. We need to investigate. I need to speak with him. And I need to do it before DGSI starts going crazy on him.”
“Insulting DGSI investigative tactics is not going to be productive.”
Angie Poole leaned toward the phone. “Where’s he being held, Mr. Director?” she asked.
“Why is this relevant?”
“It’s no secret that Branch Four has had a series of incidents,” said Poole. “At the very least, please assure us you have Dewey inside the central facility at DGSI headquarters and not Branch Four.”
“I make no such assurances. You all seem to forget the simple fact that right now he is the prime suspect in the murder of the United States secretary of state.”
“Is he at Branch Four?” she persisted.
“Yes,” Cazanove acknowledged.
Poole looked at Calibrisi. She had a concerned expression on her face.
Suddenly, Polk snapped his fingers, pointing at his phone, indicating the president was waiting. Calibrisi nodded and held up a finger: one more minute.
He turned back. “When can I speak with Dewey?” he said.
“He’s being interrogated as we speak.”
“Interrupt your men.”
“No,” said Cazanove, “I won’t. There is a process. Even you should want to see that justice is done.”
“You know damn well I want to get to the bottom of it, Bernard. But Dewey didn’t do it.”
“All evidence indicates that he did.”
Calibrisi glanced at Polk. His face was red with anger.
“Goddammit!” Calibrisi erupted. “Stop fucking around! That’s our dead secretary of state. That’s my agent and someone I know and trust personally! Someone the president trusts!”
“I’m sure Tim Lindsay was someone the president trusted as well, Hector,” Cazanove replied tartly.
“This is a U.S. issue. It just happened to have occurred on French soil.”
“If it happened at the embassy, I would agree. But it didn’t. It’s French jurisdiction. DGSI is running it. As you Americans say, period, end of statement.”
“You’re not going to let me speak with him?”
“No.” Cazanove paused. “Not yet, anyway. We need to let justice take its course.”
Calibrisi shook his head. He was irate.
“By the way,” continued Cazanove, “as part of our investigation, I have asked, through our American ambassador, for access to any and all files involving Andreas that are in your possession. We are more than willing to read them inside Langley with all various protective measures in place to ensure secrecy and whatnot. I assume this will not be a problem.”
Calibrisi’s red face turned a shade redder, but Polk got his attention, waving his finger across his neck like a guillotine, telling Calibrisi to end the call before he said something he would regret. Calibrisi shut his eyes and nodded, taking a deep breath.
“Are you there, Hector?” asked Cazanove. “Can we avoid some of the administrative steps that tend to take so much time—”
Calibrisi didn’t wait for Cazanove to complete his sentence, hanging up the phone.
“You need to stop the search warrant before it’s executed,” said Calibrisi to Brennan. “National security. We do not want DGSI reading Dewey’s files.”
Brennan stood and moved to the door.
Calibrisi looked at Poole and nodded. A green light lit up on the phone console. Calibrisi hit the speaker button.
“Sorry, Mr. President,” said Calibrisi.
“What the hell is going on?” asked Dellenbaugh.
“DGSI has Dewey in custody,” said Calibrisi. “They think he killed Lindsay.”
“What?” Dellenbaugh asked incredulously.
“They apparently have evidence, sir. His sidearm was used in the murders.”
“Oh, Christ,” said Dellenbaugh.
“It’s not possible. We both know Dewey would never do anything like this.”
“Have you spoken with him?”
“No. They won’t let me.”
Dellenbaugh was silent for a few moments.
“I actually think that might be a good thing,” the president said.
“What do you mean?”
There was another long pause.
“We have a dead secretary of state. We need to get our ducks in a row. Of course I don’t think Dewey did it, but more important than getting him out right now is the fact tha
t America’s highest-ranking diplomat was assassinated. We need to ensure this isn’t a broader attack and that it doesn’t somehow inadvertently signal our enemies or sideline some of the initiatives we’re working on.”
Calibrisi was quiet. On some level, he knew Dellenbaugh was right. But it rankled him nevertheless.
“You’re right, Mr. President,” said Calibrisi. “But Dewey is in the middle of it. The reason we need to speak with him is that he’s closest to what happened. We need to determine why someone killed Lindsay and whether it’s part of a broader sanction.”
“And you think we need to speak to Dewey to do that?”
“It certainly would help, Mr. President.”
“Is there some sort of flash brief on this by DGSI?”
“Yes. I’ll send it to you.”
“I’ll be back in two hours,” said Dellenbaugh. “I want your people running hard at this. I want updates on the way.”
“Yes, sir.” Calibrisi pressed the speaker button and hung up the phone. He knew Dellenbaugh was right, but still, something ate away at him. The focus needed to be one hundred percent on Lindsay. First he would call Jim Bruckheimer at NSA and get his team of cryptologists and eavesdroppers charging ahead. Next he’d coordinate a call with Derek Chalmers at MI6 and Mossad. But he couldn’t help thinking there was something else going on.
“The president is right,” said Calibrisi, looking at Polk, then Perry, and Angie. “I want our best Europe and CT analysts on this, same with field personnel. We need to find out what happened and why. I’ll call Jim Bruckheimer and get them hunting down the death threats, chatter, and whatever other intel might be related to the killings. Let’s reconvene in thirty minutes.”
Calibrisi picked up the phone, shooing them away.
“Get me Jim Bruckheimer at Fort Meade. Tell him it’s urgent.”
34
DIRECTION GÉNÉRALE DE LA SÉCURITÉ INTÉRIEURE (DGSI)
BRANCH FOUR
PARIS
The van arrived at a nondescript warehouse behind Gare Montparnasse, the massive train station in south-central Paris. This was Branch Four, one of three high-security DGSI intake centers used for temporary incarceration and interrogation of suspected terrorists.
Dewey was pulled from the van and led down a brightly lit corridor. The walls were made of corrugated steel, the floor was concrete. A faint aroma of oil was in the air. Dewey passed through a doorway into a line of cellblocks. The individual cells were unnerving and different from any other incarceration units he’d ever seen. The front was a wall of Plexiglas, with overhead lights so bright as to sting the eyes.
He glanced inside the units as he passed by. The first few were empty. In the third, a bald man in an orange prison jumpsuit was asleep on a concrete platform. His head was covered in a bizarre-looking tattoo, some sort of geometric pattern in black-and-red ink. Suddenly, the man’s eyes shot open. He stared at Dewey and then at the guards. He stood and ran toward the Plexiglas wall, screaming angrily, then launched himself against it. The wall didn’t move, and even his words were impossible to hear; the cell was soundproof.
Dewey’s world was on fire.
Focus. Stay calm.
Yet as much as he tried to remain in the present, as much as he tried to register the concrete and steel walls all around him, all he could think about was the woman on the train—the woman he saw in Lindsay’s suite. He couldn’t make sense of any of it. He needed to speak with someone. He needed Calibrisi, and not just to get him out of jail. He needed to tell someone about the woman. He knew one thing with overwhelming certainty: he had to find the woman who murdered Lindsay.
Unless …
Unless she didn’t do it. But who else could’ve done it? One of the agents? They were both dead. It made no sense. It had to be her. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t she be dead too?
Dewey pictured his gun on the floor of Lindsay’s room. Whoever did it had access to his room. That was a small group—Lindsay himself, the CONS OP detail, and certain hotel employees who’d been extensively vetted and were allowed in only with permission. Whoever did it also knew he was packing a weapon. How could they have gotten into the room without getting stopped by Lindsay’s security team?
There were too many variables. It was impossible to make sense of it all.
Dewey tried to sift through it by imagining the operation:
Lindsay in the suite with the woman.
Two agents in the hallway.
She exits, door closes, she guns down the two agents.
She finds a key to his room on one of the agents. Retrieves his gun and returns to Lindsay’s suite, knocks on his door, kills him, drops the gun.
But why go through the complication of framing him? It made no sense. If she had a gun to kill the agents, why not simply use it to shoot Lindsay too? Why the theatrics of setting him up? To frame him? Certainly there were people who wanted Dewey dead, enemies, people like the Fortunas. Dewey’s enemies didn’t want him in jail. They wanted him dead.
Could it have been a hotel employee, an embedded operative from another intelligence service—China, Russia, Iran—posing as a chamber maid? She shows up to clean the room, takes his weapon, kills both guards, then Lindsay. The woman who was in the room isn’t killed because she had already left.
That made more sense. Then again, it didn’t. Every hotel employee had been thoroughly vetted against every CIA, State, NSA, and INTERPOL database that existed. In addition, the only employees allowed on the floor had to have been working at the hotel a minimum of twenty years. A hotel employee would’ve been easy. Too easy.
The woman.
Then he remembered the words from training:
The minutes immediately after lethal action are the most important. Successful lethal action is not just about removing a target. Just as important is the freeing up of time for escape from the overwhelming suspicion, movement, and reaction that will come in the seconds and minutes after it’s done.
The words were Delta, but Delta didn’t have a monopoly on how to successfully sanitize a targeted killing. The tactic was universal.
Distraction, confusion, and misdirection must be built into the planning of any assassination. They are as powerful a weapon as the one that is used to kill.
Yes, that’s what they did—what she did. Created a distraction. He was the distraction. At this very moment, Dewey should’ve been moving to find her, and yet here he was in a DGSI terror unit. In all likelihood, he would be interrogated for days, maybe weeks.
The U.S. secretary of state had been murdered on French soil. It would be a huge black eye for France and DGSI specifically. Even with Calibrisi’s assistance, he would likely remain in DGSI custody for weeks or even months. There would be pharmaceuticals. It had been years since he’d endured them. Indeed, if only for the intelligence value of what was inside Dewey’s head, DGSI would put him through a gauntlet of physical and mental torture. They wouldn’t kill him … unless.
He recalled his trial so many years ago, after Holly was found dead. Then, too, it had been his gun that shot the fatal bullet. Her face was beyond recognition. He knew it was suicide, of course. But then he got his first lesson in the American justice system. He was falsely accused of murdering her. The local DA had him locked up and put him on trial.
Dewey also learned then about being abandoned by the very people he needed most, the U.S. military, the people he worked for, sacrificed for, risked his life for. The military abandoned him to the justice system, washed their hands of the entire thing. Dewey vowed to never again allow himself to be placed at the whim of those above him. It was happening all over again.
Hector isn’t like the others. He’ll know what to do.
But would he?
Calibrisi had been back at his desk at Langley for less than a week when he sent Dewey to Paris. His recovery from a massive heart attack had taken months. It weakened him physically and mentally. More important, it weakened Calibrisi within the cutthroat ranks of U.
S. intelligence. Others asserted themselves in places that were the purview of the CIA. Even inside Langley, the rumors of Calibrisi’s possible retirement were rampant.
And then it struck Dewey. Even with the full weight of the U.S. government pushing for his release, he’d be lucky to come out the other end alive. Not because the French would intentionally kill him, but being in a French prison would. His identity would be on INTERPOL within hours. Every enemy he’d ever made would know where he was. It would not be hard for someone to hire the right people—inmates or guards—to stick a knife in Dewey’s back while he slept.
He felt his heart beating faster. It was a feeling of futility and helplessness.
Why did you do this? Who are you?!
The agents brought Dewey into a small, windowless, and dimly lit interrogation room. A lone chair sat in the middle of the room, a small table in front of it. Dark bloodstains were spattered on the concrete floor. Dewey was pushed to the chair and shoved onto the seat. His legs and wrists were cuffed tight to the chair, which was bolted to the floor. A two-way mirror took up half a wall off to the side.
The door opened and two men entered. One—a blond-haired man with a long nose—was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He looked to be in his late twenties. The other man was tall, with longish brown hair, dressed in a green corduroy suit and no tie. He appeared to be around forty.
“I am Detective Beauxchamps,” said the older man, with only a hint of a French accent. “This is Detective Rousse. You are Dewey Andreas, yes?”
35
SAINT-DENIS—UNIVERSITÉ
Romy got off at the next station and switched trains. There were too many people wondering why the large man was chasing her. She switched trains again, not knowing where she was going. After almost an hour, she came to Saint-Denis—Université and got off, climbing the stairs to the streets above.
She found a drugstore a few blocks from the Métro station. She walked down several aisles until she found scissors. In the back of the drugstore were restrooms. She went inside the women’s room and locked the door.
Romy stood before the mirror and grabbed a handful of hair, lifting it above her head, holding it taut. With her other hand, she took the scissors and started cutting her hair as close to her scalp as she could. Slowly, over the course of the next few minutes, she cut her hair as short as possible, leaving only a thin, patchy layer of hair. She took as much of the hair as she could and flushed it down the toilet, then quickly left the drugstore.
