Tom Clancy Support and Defend

by Tom Clancy

  Charcoal-suit man didn’t look like he was with the college boys, they certainly hadn’t been together earlier, but the glance was one of insecurity. Concern.

  To Dom the look said, “Should I follow him in?”

  After the look the man did, in fact, head down the hallway to the bathroom.

  Dom had been on the passive lookout for Ross’s spotter, but he knew these guys weren’t working with Ross. The glance said something else.

  They weren’t Ross’s fairy godmothers.

  This was a tail.

  Dom corrected himself. This was another tail. This had to be the FBI conducting surveillance on Ross, and this infuriated Caruso. He wanted to punch his fist into the wall next to him, but he fought the urge. He knew good and well that Ross’s spotter would have seen the man he’d funneled into the choke point, and this meant Ross would now spook and go to ground, making proving anything against him much more difficult.

  Dom took out his phone and dialed a number he’d saved in the memory. After a few rings, a man answered.

  “Albright.”

  Caruso whispered, though there was no one around. “Damn it, Darren, your boys are fucking up.”

  “My . . . boys? What boys?”

  “Listen to me. The tail on Ross has got to pull back. He’s running an SDR, but he’s got a spotter. Your team is trying to stick too close to him. Shit, I’m ninety percent sure it’s already too late. One of them just got dragged through a choke point.”

  “Where are you?”

  Dom sighed. “I’m at Union Station. The food court.”

  “You are following Ethan Ross?”

  “A hell of a lot better than your team is following him.”

  “I told you before, you are to stay out of the investigation. And you agreed to that. On top of that, he’s not even a subject of inquiry.”

  “If he’s not a subject of inquiry why do you have a tail on—”

  “We don’t have a tail on him!”

  Dom watched the two young men at the table as they stood and headed for the stairs, drifting through the light crowd. Dom expected they would go up and find a static watch location for when Ross ascended.

  Dom asked, “Then who the hell are these guys?”

  Albright did not respond to the question. Instead, he said, “I want you to go home. I’ll come over later and talk to you about this.”

  “This tail on him isn’t FBI? You’re one hundred percent certain?”

  “I am disinclined to discuss any part of the investigation with you at this point, since you obviously haven’t held up your end of our bargain. But just so you will back off and not harass any civilians who are presumed innocent, I can positively confirm, on my mother’s grave, that I do not have any surveillance package of any kind on NSC staffer Ethan Ross.”

  “What are you going to do about these guys?”

  “I suggest you contact the NSC. If there is a security issue involving one of their employees, they need to take care of it.” Albright hung up the phone.

  Dom rolled his eyes. Clearly, Albright didn’t believe Caruso’s concerns were valid.

  The two young men were out of sight now, but Dom thought about their appearance. They both had dark hair and somewhat olive complexions, but they could have been from just about anywhere save Scandinavia. The man in the charcoal suit had salt-and-pepper hair and lighter skin, although he wasn’t exactly fair, either.

  There were really no definitive conclusions he could draw about them from their appearance.

  Ross appeared from the bathroom hallway, and Dominic looked down at his food. When he looked up again, thirty seconds later, Ross was gone. He’d apparently ascended the other staircase, on the far side of the basement from where Dom now sat.

  Dom did not go after him. There was already too much going on around here for his taste, so he decided he’d just finish his lunch and go home.

  He took a bite of the gyro, but realized he’d lost his appetite. Thinking about Ross, the fact he had confederates, the fact he now knew he was under suspicion and he would now act in a way that might well make him safer for it, churned Dominic’s stomach. He stood and dumped his leftovers in a nearby garbage can, then headed toward the stairs closest to him.

  Just in front of him a thick-set older man in a camel-wool coat turned to take the stairs, and Dom had to slow to let him pass.

  Dom had just taken his first step up when he looked above him, past the older man, and he noticed a pair of uniformed D.C. metro police officers descending. One spoke into the microphone attached to his epaulet, and both men moved purposefully, as if they were being dispatched downstairs on a mission.

  Almost instinctively, Dom turned around and began walking away from the stairs.

  He knew instantly that Darren Albright had called the local police.

  Not to grab Ross. Not to grab the guy spotting for Ross. Not to grab the men following Ross.

  But to grab Caruso.

  “Fucking Albright,” he mumbled to himself.

  He walked past the hallway to the restrooms on his left and he continued to the stairs at the west end of the basement. Just before he reached them he turned away quickly and pretended to use an ATM on his right, keeping his back to the stairs.

  Two more Metro PD came down the west staircase and passed him unaware. After they moved on into the room, Dom spun away and shot up the stairs, then out of Union Station.

  JUST AS DOM had suspected, Ethan Ross’s fairy godmother had spotted the men on his tail. Harlan Banfield had sat in the food court, at a bench alongside a creperie ahead of Caruso but out of his view on the other side of a support column.

  The moment he saw the men, Banfield ID’d them as FBI. This was confirmation bias. Ross thought the Feds were on to him, someone was, in fact, onto him, so Banfield presumed it was the Feds.

  He was in constant communication with Ethan, but he did not tell him he was being followed. Instead, Banfield told Ethan to begin walking back to his car in Chinatown, and he would tell him what to do next. Once Ethan was out of the bathroom and taking the stairs out of the basement, Harlan headed to the staircase closest to him, rushed past a young man in a motorcycle jacket, and climbed up. A pair of D.C. police were heading down, but Banfield didn’t pay any attention to them, he was already thinking about what to do next with Ethan Ross.

  AS HE HEADED BACK to his motorcycle in Chinatown, Dom fished through his pocket and pulled out the card the Mossad officer gave him the previous morning. He dialed the number, and David answered on the first ring.

  “Mr. Caruso, so good of you to call. How can I be of service?”

  “Do you have surveillance on someone here in D.C.?”

  David chuckled. “That is a vague question. Of course we have someone under surveillance. Syrian diplomats. Palestinian radicals. Egyptian military attachés. Your capital city is a surprisingly hostile environment. I presume, however, you are referring to someone specific?”

  “Someone who might have been involved in the NSA breach.”

  David answered unequivocally. “Absolutely not. As I told you, we are hoping you might help us with that. We have other feelers out, of course, but so far nothing solid. If you are telling me you already have a suspect, I will be most impressed.”

  “Well I do have a suspect, and he’s got a tail.”

  “FBI?”

  “The FBI says no.”

  “That’s interesting. Some other actor is following him?”

  “It appears so.”

  “What is this man’s name? I’ll look into it on my end.” Dom hesitated. No, he wasn’t ready to get the Mossad involved in this. They were just one more moving part to a situation that was quickly becoming extremely complicated. Dom decided it was better he kept them at arm’s reach—for now, anyway. “It’s just a hunch. I’ll let you know if I find out anything more.”

  “If you say this man is under surveillance, then that makes him more than a hunch. Involve us, Dominic, and we can use our re
sources to vet him.”

  “I’ll call you back.” Dom hung up the phone and kept walking. David was right, Ethan Ross was more than a hunch. But for now, all Dominic could do was try to think of a way to convince Special Agent Albright of this fact.

  24

  AFTER AN HOUR of Ross browsing through several malls and chain stores in a very natural-looking dry-cleaning run, Banfield saw no more sign of any surveillance on his whistleblower. Still, it was clear to Banfield that the FBI was, at least, attempting to monitor Ross’s movements.

  At three-thirty in the afternoon he called Ethan and told him to go to an underground parking garage in Columbia Heights. Here, Ethan climbed into Banfield’s car, and together the two men drove through rush-hour traffic to the Ritz- Carlton on 22nd Street, where they parked in the underground lot below the hotel.

  While Ethan waited in the car, Banfield went alone up to Gianna Bertoli’s two-room suite, checked the area and the route up a back stairwell, and then returned to shepherd Ethan up with him.

  The three turned the volume in the television high and they ran the water in the bathtub and the shower and then sat close together on chairs in the living room of the suite. Bertoli had no real suspicion she was under surveillance, but as the director of the International Transparency Project, she’d learned to take a number of necessary steps to ensure her privacy.

  Only when they were all seated with wine from the minibar in their hands did Banfield inform Ross he was, without a doubt, under surveillance by the FBI.

  Ross’s eyes glazed over.

  Bertoli asked, “You’re certain, Harlan?”

  “Yes. I identified at least three men following him through Union Station. We slipped away from them after that, and he was clean by the time I picked him up. But the tail was real.”

  “Shit,” mumbled Ethan.

  Banfield turned to Ethan and brightened a little. “That’s the bad news. The good news is I checked with another of my whistleblowers, this person has access to U.S. federal employee files. I had her look into NSC employee records, and there are no new flags or security holds on badges or computer access of any staff member. That makes me think the surveillance on you is very preliminary. They are suspicious, and they’ll keep digging, but for now they don’t have enough to go on to do anything more than put a tail on you.”

  As far as Ethan was concerned, Banfield was just sugarcoating it. Ethan felt his entire life slipping away from him. His family would not understand. While his parents would be sympathetic with the ideological reasons behind his actions, they were ex–government hacks, and they would think him a traitor like the rest of the world.

  He leaned back in the chair and stared into space.

  Bertoli knelt on the floor next to the young NSA staffer, hugging him in sympathy, as if the two had known each other for years.

  Ethan spoke into the softness of her curly hair. “What am I going to do?”

  She put her arm on his shoulder and held it firmly. “For now, you need to act naturally.”

  “Albright is going to talk to Eve, and he is going to lean on her. She’ll tell them she told me about specific system vulnerabilities, and then they will arrest me.”

  Bertoli said, “You are in a serious situation, I do not want to minimize it. But it is not dire. Not yet. The problem is, when it becomes dire, it will be too late for you to help yourself.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There is something you need to do, and you need to do it now.”

  “You are talking about the damn scrape again?”

  “Yes. Harlan just said you still have access to your system. Go in to work tomorrow morning and download the files, then secure them whatever way you think is best. Just in case you need your ace in the hole.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll just dig my hole deeper. Better I take my chances now. If they arrest me, I’ll get the best lawyer money can buy, and I’ll make as much noise as I can. Maybe if I’m lucky—”

  Bertoli put her hand on Ethan’s cheek. “My poor, naive Ethan. If they catch you, you won’t be famous. There won’t be a big trial for you to air your grievances.”

  Ethan said, “This is America. They’ll have to put me on trial.”

  She shook her head. “No. They will psych you.”

  “Psych me?”

  “Deem you a security risk, and then put you in a psychological facility, fill you up with meds, give you sort of a chemical lobotomy. They will forget about you. Everyone will forget about you.” With a rueful smile she said, “The worst part is . . . you will forget about you.”

  Ethan had heard rumors along these lines, but he’d never believed them. But Bertoli seemed utterly credible. He found it impossible to doubt her.

  “What do you propose?”

  Banfield said, “You make your scrape, then you get out of town. Someplace far away so you can avoid arrest and set things up on your terms. Not theirs.”

  “I could go to my mom’s in San Francisco.”

  Bertoli shook her head. “No, Ethan. I am talking about going abroad. I’m talking about asylum.”

  He put his head in his hands. “Asylum? No. God, no.” He mumbled to himself, his eyes distant like a victim of shock, as the weight of his predicament crashed down upon him.

  The NASCAR drive appeared in her hand, and she folded it into his. He did not resist. Once again she said, “If you wait until you need it, it will be too late.”

  Banfield leaned closer, too. “Through my contact, I will know if your access is blocked. That will be our indication that the FBI is planning on making an arrest. But again, it will be too late then.”

  Ethan put the crawler in the pocket of his jacket and stood up. “I don’t know. I need to think about it.”

  Bertoli let the worry on her face show, but she said, “Okay. I understand.”

  Harlan and Ethan left Gianna a few minutes later, slipping out the back stairs and down to the parking lot.

  As the two men drove out of the neighborhood on the way to drop Ethan at a taxi stand in Petworth, Ethan decided he would talk to Eve to get a feel about just how bad things were. If she had been interviewed by Albright, if the situation seemed utterly hopeless, then he would go in to the office tomorrow morning and steal secrets to use as a bargaining chip.

  But he’d do it only if he had to. He told himself he was still in control, not Banfield, not Bertoli, not Albright. He would do what was best for him. Ethan believed in nothing more than he believed in his own intellect, and he still thought he could game this seemingly hopeless situation into something else. Not a victory for him, perhaps. That was too much to hope for. But maybe a draw. A détente between the parties.

  Ethan Ross had faith in his brilliance. He’d get through this somehow and come out on the other end intact.

  DOM CARUSO SAT on his couch with a half-empty bottle of Harp beer in his hand. The TV was off, his computer was shut down and in another room, and he’d straightened his living room to some small degree, because he expected company soon.

  In the quiet of the moment he made a mental survey of his injuries. The headaches had gone away, he was thankful for that. He felt the tightness in his rib cage still; the pain had lessened greatly, but the spasm remained constant, and the ache of bruised tissue rose and fell with every breath. The cuts to his arm and chest were healing, he’d probably not rebandage them after his next shower, even though they would look pretty nasty for a few more weeks.

  Dom had a little experience picking up knocks and dings. He was tough enough to shrug them off mentally long before they disappeared physically.

  The knock at his door came about when he expected it to. Even the nature and temperament of the knocks, four thundering angry bangs, sounded just about as he had imagined they would. He didn’t get up from his couch at first. Instead he sipped his beer, leaned back on his sofa, and waited for the next set of furious knocks.

  No sense in rushing what was to come.

  After several
more bangs he heard, “Caruso!”

  “It’s open,” Dom answered back.

  Darren Albright entered a moment later; he wore a dark blue suit with no overcoat, and his hands were empty. He shut the door behind him, saw Dominic sitting on the sofa, and all but stormed over to him.

  “Have a seat.” Dom pointed to a leather chair, but Albright ignored it.

  “We had a deal.”

  “I thought of it as more of a gentleman’s agreement.”

  “And you’re not a gentleman?”

  “There’s a time for that, sure. This just isn’t it.”

  Albright heaved as if summoning the strength to continue talking to a disobedient child. He sat down and leaned forward. “I can’t have you interfering with the investigation. Ethan Ross is just one of many potential subjects in this, it’s going to take some time and some good fieldwork to narrow down the actual culprit. Anything that can jeopardize a good arrest is going to—”

  “I think he’s your man.”

  “If you know something that leads you to that conclusion, I’d like to hear it.”

  Dom opened his mouth to speak, but Albright held a hand up quickly. “Unless, of course, what you say might compromise this investigation or make a successful prosecution impossible. I can’t know what you and your spook buddies have done to violate Ross’s Fourth Amendment rights, for example. If it’s inadmissible in court, which I guess is probably the case with every goddamned thing you guys do, then do me the favor of keeping me the fuck out of it.”

  Dom closed his mouth. He had nothing to say now. Albright noted this. “Great. That’s just fucking great. I’m going to just play like I don’t know you and your people conducted some sort of unreasonable search and seizure.”

  “‘Unreasonable search and seizure’? Reciting buzz words from the Fourth Amendment isn’t going to help you catch your man.”

  Albright launched out of the chair. “But it will help me convict the guilty party! That’s all that matters to me. I can see it in your eyes, Caruso. This is personal. Very personal. But when an off-the-books spook makes things personal, law and order are the first things tossed out the window.”