by Jake Needham
“I thought you and the CIA were on the same side.”
“So did I.”
Tay shook his head. “Look, I’m just a simple policeman. These spy games you people play go right over my head.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” the Conductor said. “And they’re not games. We simply live in a world that functions a little differently from the one in which most people live.”
“A wilderness of mirrors,” Tay quoted. “T.S. Eliot. But I’m sure you know that.”
The Conductor smiled slightly, but said nothing.
“So, you want me to stalk this woman, ambush her, and frighten her enough to get her to tell me why she set your people up to be killed.”
“We want you to confront her and identify yourself as an Interpol investigator looking into the Hong Kong bombing. That will put the cat among the proverbial pigeons. And, yes, maybe she will simply tell you why she did this.”
“That makes me think of another line from the same Eliot poem.”
“What’s that?”
“After such knowledge, what forgiveness?”
Tay looked from the Conductor to August and back to the Conductor again, but neither of them seemed to have anything to say.
Tay cleared his throat to break the silence. “So, you want me to watch this woman as she moves around here in Washington?”
The Conductor nodded.
“I gather you don’t expect me to do that on foot.”
“Of course not. We have a car for you.”
“Ah, well, a car.” Tay seemed to think that over. “Then I guess that just leaves one problem.”
The Conductor waited, his face assuming a polite expression of curiosity.
“I don’t have a driver’s license,” Tay told him.
“Seriously? You really don’t?”
“No. I grew up in Singapore.”
“I don’t understand. What’s that got to do with it?”
“A lot of people in Singapore don’t drive. Driving a car might be a life skill for Americans, and owning a car might be as common here as owning a pair of shoes, but it’s not that way in Singapore.”
“Are you telling me you don’t know how to drive?”
“Of course, I know how. I’m just not a very good driver.”
“Nobody in Washington is a good driver. You’ll fit right in.”
“You drive on the wrong side of the road here.”
“The right side.”
“Yes, the wrong side.”
“This conversation is turning into an Abbott and Costello routine,” the Conductor chuckled.
“Who’re Abbott and Costello?” Claire asked.
Everyone looked at her.
“You’re not serious,” the Conductor said.
“I’m perfectly serious.”
“You’re also making me feel as old as dirt.”
“Can we get back to the subject now?” Tay asked. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel comfortable trying to drive here on the wrong side of the road.”
“You mean the right side.”
“Yes, the wrong side.”
“For fuck’s sake,” August interrupted, “don’t start that shit again!”
A silence fell. Tay wasn’t about to break it since he was enjoying it too much. And neither August nor the Conductor knew how to break it since they couldn’t figure out what to do.
Eventually, Claire spoke up.
“I’ll drive Sam around Washington.”
“You need to stay dead,” August said.
“I’ll wear dark glasses.”
August just looked at her.
“No one in Washington knows me, John. There’s no risk anyone who sees me is going to connect me to Hong Kong.”
August thought about that for a moment. He looked at the Conductor.
“It could work,” the Conductor said. “I don’t have a better idea.”
And so it was settled.
“One other thing bothers me,” Tay said.
“Only one thing?” August asked.
“How is Interpol supposed to have connected the Hong Kong explosion to Rebecca Sternwood?”
“Doesn’t matter,” August said. “You don’t have to tell her even if she asks. You’re an investigator following up leads just like you have a thousand times before. Since when do cops worry about telling the people you interview what information led you to them and where you got it?”
Tay had to admit August was right about that, but he said nothing.
“It’s perfect, Sam. You’re an investigator from Interpol following up leads on the Hong Kong bombing. Since you’re Singaporean, this woman is going to jump to the conclusion that this investigation is being pushed by the Chinese government. She’ll assume the Hong Kong cops found something that connects the bombing to her and that’s what has brought you to her doorstep. Since you know she’s CIA, she will immediately see what this is really all about. Using her to nail the Agency.”
Tay said nothing.
“If Interpol and the Chinese have connected Miss Sternwood to the bombing, Sam, this woman is looking at murder charges and the Agency is looking at major international embarrassment. She’s going to panic and go straight to whoever set this whole operation in motion to tell him you’re somehow onto them. When she does, we’ll be watching.”
“But what if she just walks down the hall to another office and talks to someone there? How will you ever know?”
“Whoever is really running this will be keeping it entirely off campus. They’re not going to be sitting around Agency offices and talking about killing off American citizens who work for another organization. There’ll be no phone contact, no email, nothing electronic at all. They’ll be using the same technique we use to guarantee secrecy. All contact will be in person, and it will be in some off-campus location.”
“And what if you’re wrong? What if she really is doing this on her own? What if she’s just got some grudge against you personally for reasons you’ve long forgotten?”
“She’ll still panic. Her career, even her freedom will be at risk, and she’ll push back.”
“Push back? What does that mean?”
“Well…”
August tilted his head back and consulted the ceiling as if an explanation might be written there. After a moment he said, “She’ll probably look for a way to put an end to your investigation.”
“Like by putting an end to me.”
August nodded.
“Then let’s just put this plainly then, shall we, John? What you intend to do is dangle me in front of Rebecca Sternwood as live bait. You want to see if she bites me or if somebody else bites me. And assuming I don’t get swallowed whole, you’ll figure out what to do after that. Do I have that about right?”
“Gosh, Sam, when you put it that way you make it sound so wrong.”
For a moment Tay found himself wondering if he could really trust August. He had never wondered that before, never had any reason to, but suddenly there the thought was, and try as he might he could not make it murmur an apology for the interruption and disappear.
Was August turning him into a goat tethered to a stake and waiting for the lion to turn up? And if he was the goat, who the hell was the lion? Was it the CIA, or was it something else entirely, something he couldn’t even imagine existed? He had no idea.
The next move was apparently to be Tay’s, so Tay lit a Marlboro and thought about what August had just told him. It hadn’t been the whole story. Of course it hadn’t, but he had no idea what was missing. Still, he had to give August credit. He knew how to spin a tale that would reel him in.
All those years he had been a policeman, he had never tired of the mysteries that were brought to him, but he had tired of the solutions. In almost every case, those solutions turned out to be insipid, disappointing, and commonplace. If he’d had a flaw as a detective, it was his tendency to imagine, or perhaps hope, that at the end of each trail he would find something compelling or at least in
teresting. There never really was. The human drama more often than not wound up as nothing more than unintended comedy. The motivations for human action were depressingly trivial.
Maybe it was time to take his skills and use them for something that offered more promise, something that might actually turn out to matter. Maybe this was his chance to solve a mystery with real consequences. If not now, when?
Tay scooped up the fake Interpol passport and credentials, pushed them back into the manila envelope, and looked around the table.
“Well, shit,” he shrugged. “I guess you’ve got me.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
After breakfast, August and the Conductor adjourned to a room at the back of the house that had been kitted out as a secure meeting area. It had soundproofed walls, no windows, and a single door, also soundproofed. August had always suspected the space had originally been constructed as a servants’ room, which felt entirely fitting every time the Conductor hauled him into it to work him over about the details of some operation.
August and the Conductor sat at a round wooden table in small and somewhat uncomfortable straight-backed metal chairs with hard plastic seats. There were four other identical chairs at the table, all empty.
“Do you really think your friend Tay can do this, John?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“It’s not too late to call it off, you know. We can find another way to deal with this.”
“I don’t have another way, sir. I can’t just call up the Agency and ask who there would like to kill me. Half of Langley would put up a hand.”
“And you’re absolutely certain there’s no chance this was simply personal?”
“That doesn’t make any sense. I’m visible enough. If someone just wanted me, they could have sent someone into Secrets most any time and popped me. They didn’t have to go through all this. No, whoever is behind this wants to kill the Band, not just me.”
The Conductor nodded, but he didn’t say anything.
“Besides,” August continued, “the way the bomb’s trigger mechanism was designed makes it clear that they wanted to be sure all three of us were inside before it detonated. They wanted to get the whole team.”
“Perhaps they just wanted to make sure you were inside the room. After all, they had no idea the order in which the three of you would enter it.”
“The whole plot was way too complicated just to take out one person. The bomb in Hong Kong was set up to take out an entire team in a very public way. Somebody thought it would expose the Band and cripple us, maybe even shut us down altogether.”
August fidgeted for a moment, not certain he should ask the question that was in his mind, but then he just asked it.
“Is there something going on here in Washington that I should know, sir? Something that might explain why the Band is under attack?”
“This president doesn’t much like the Agency. He doesn’t trust them.” The Conductor paused and thought for a moment. “This president does like the Band. He does trust us.”
“But the Band can’t replace the whole Central Intelligence Agency. Nobody in his right mind would think that was possible.”
“Not many people know what we can do and what we cannot do. Over the years we’ve become something of a myth.”
“A myth?”
“Nobody really knows who we are or how we operate. A few people know the President has some sort of means by which he can take action without going through the normal mechanisms of government, but they don’t know what it is. And that scares the crap out of absolutely everybody.”
“I can understand why the Agency might feel threatened by us, sir, but it’s hard to believe they would try to protect themselves by killing Americans who are essentially in the same business they are.”
“Who was it who said, No matter how cynical you get in Washington, it’s hard to keep up?”
“I think that was you, sir.”
The Conductor pursed his lips and tilted his head slightly as if struggling to bring something into focus in spite of having forgotten his glasses.
“It was, wasn’t it?”
August smiled, but he didn’t say anything.
“This town is defined by power, John. If you have it, you matter. If you don’t have it, you don’t matter. There are some people at the Agency who might do almost anything if they thought the Agency was going to lose power, and therefore they were going to lose power.”
“Like Rebecca Sternwood?”
“She’s just a bureaucrat. Somebody spun her a story. They might have told her, for example, that you and your people were former intelligence officers turned mercenaries who were trying to kidnap an American double agent being planted with the Chinese. Then they had her put together an operation to take you out and make it look like the Chinese had done it to eliminate the agent. You would have believed a story like that, wouldn’t you, John?”
“I would have if it had come from you, sir.”
“I think that’s more or less what happened with Miss Sternwood as well. Her superiors laid out a convincing scenario as to why they wanted her to mount an operation to kill you. She probably felt all warm and fuzzy that they were willing to trust her with such an important job, and she went after you as hard as she could.”
“Then you think she’s just an innocent here?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way. I just don’t think she came up with this operation herself.”
“Then who did?”
“No idea.”
“Do you know who this woman’s superiors are?”
“We know who the organization charts say they are, but that doesn’t help very much. We have to get Rebecca Sternwood to tell us why she did this, and we have to get her to tell us who directed her to do it. Whether she knows that she’s telling us doesn’t matter, but we need to hear it directly from her.”
“And when we find out for sure who was behind the Hong Kong bombing, what are we going to do, sir?”
“I guess that’s the real question, isn’t it, John? What do you think we should do?”
“I’m sure you already know the answer to that, sir.”
“I feel pretty much the same way, but this may not be quite that simple.”
“I think it’s exactly that simple. Somebody tried to kill me and my team. When they find out they failed, they’re not likely just to shrug it off and go out for a nice dinner. Unless we put them out of business, they’ll come after us again. What’s complicated about that?”
“You may be right. Let me think about it.”
The Conductor pushed back his chair and stood up, signaling to August their meeting was over, but then he hesitated.
“I haven’t questioned your decision to bring Tay into this, John, but I have to tell you I’m not entirely comfortable with it.”
“He has skills I don’t have, sir, skills I need right now, and I trust him absolutely.”
“Maybe you do, but bringing in strangers isn’t how we work around here.”
“Sam isn’t a stranger. Not to me.”
“Maybe not, but he is to me, and the worst thing about this business is that you learn to doubt everything and everybody.”
“Do you doubt me?”
“Of course not.”
“Then trust me about bringing Tay in just like you trust me about everything else.”
“For God’s sake, John, there aren’t two dozen people in the whole government of the United States who know for sure that we exist, let alone who we are and what we really do, and now Tay knows all about us. He’s not even an American.”
“Yes, he is. His father was an American.”
“Tay has an American passport? He’s an American citizen?”
August hesitated. “Not technically.”
“Not technically? What does that mean? Either he is or he isn’t.”
“Sam doesn’t have an American passport because he never formally claimed American citizenship.”
“Why
not?”
“I guess he doesn’t really like Americans all that much, sir.”
The Conductor sighed heavily and shook his head.
“He’s your responsibility, John. If I have to hang him, I’m going to string you up right alongside him.”
August figured the Conductor was just kidding.
Probably.
IV
Conclusione
Chapter Thirty-Four
“This is a nice car,” Tay said as Claire drove out of the alleyway behind the safe house and pulled into traffic. “Is it yours?”
She glanced at Tay out of the corner of her eye to see if he was joking. He didn’t look like he was.
“The Band never has any trouble coming up with whatever we need,” Claire said. “Cars, airplanes, weapons, you name it.”
When he had been a cop in Singapore, Tay had had to jump up and down and flap his arms every time he needed a new ballpoint pen. Americans had it too easy. And what really annoyed him was how they seemed to feel entitled to have it easy.
“What kind of car is this?” he asked.
“It’s a Mustang.”
Tay had never heard of a Mustang. They didn’t have them in Singapore and he didn’t know anything about American cars. Not about any kind of cars from anywhere, to be entirely truthful, since he had never owned a car and had never wanted to. Singapore was an island with a decent mass transit system and a lot of taxis. Cars were more of a nuisance there than anything. Where was he going to drive to? Indonesia?
Tay had to admit the Mustang was sharp looking, shiny black on the outside and saddle-tan leather on the inside. He could certainly understand its appeal to some people. It even had an unexpected appeal to him.
“Maybe I’ll get one,” Tay said.
“You probably ought to think about getting a driver’s license first.”
“I can do that. Driving’s not exactly rocket science. Say, do you suppose I can get a Mustang with the steering wheel on the other side where it’s supposed to be?”
Claire gave him a look, but she said nothing.
