The Killing Ploy

THE KILLING PLOY By Steve Haberman Copyright © 2012 Steve Haberman All rights reserved. Discover other titles and more at: www.murderthrillermysteries.com Fate! Cruel, merciless fate! Anon. CONTENTS Prologue PART ONE: THE BEGINNING OF IT ALL 1. Searching For Accomplices 2. A Scream In The Dark 3. A Meeting At The Gulag 4. The Prague Colloquium 5. Final Thoughts 6. Eden On The Pacific 7. Entry 74 8. Armageddon’s Devils 9. A Missing Computer Or Two 10. Cryptic Thursday 11. Concho’s 12. Exit T. J. 13. A File On Boy Scout 14. A Tinge Of Suspicion 15. Sunday At The Beach 16. Thieves’ Remorse? 17. Lawyering Up 18. Re: Ernst Gunther 19. Close And Personal 20. Panic 21. Sanctum Sanctorum PART TWO: HUNTING A GHOST 22. Aka Billy Foster 23. A Special Project 24. Trigger Man’s File 25. Evening And Morning Chatter 26. A Dangerous Old Man 27. MI5’s Man 28. Tying Up A Loose End 29. A Plan Made 30. A Loose End Undone 31. No Club For A Gentleman 32. Paris 33. Inquiry At The Offenbach 34. A Shiver Of Fear 35. Incident At Châtelet-Les-Halles 36. Table Talk 37. The Kitchen Table Dealer 38. 7:35 A. M. Rendezvous 39. Brussels 40. The Man In Apartment 219 41. If It Bleeds, It Leads 42. The Rumor 43. Evasion To The Cosmopole 44. Fleshing Out The Tale 45. The Third Sector 46. The Press Conference 47. Vienna 48. Stuart The Apostate? 49. We Seem To Have A Little Problem 50. Paris/Vienna 51. More Dirty Work 52. Vienna 53. Blood And Footprints PROLOGUE Pablo de Silva crouched behind the stone wall that edged the boulevard and municipal Stadtpark in Zürich's Old Quarter. Still no snatch teams in sight. Worst case, he feared, a CIA no-show, and he'd be forced to pull the trigger. A clean shot across, if he was lucky, whenever Billy Foster reemerged from the Franz Joseph Hotel. If he was lucky. No bodyguards bunched close to that American-turned terrorist to hinder his aim. No freezing up either; that humiliating Berlin incident behind him. A sudden flurry of movement. He relaxed his grip on the long-range gun, wiped his forehead of sweat, peeked above the wall, then froze his gaze, stunned. Still another one? An eighth bodyguard exited the grand hotel's main entrance and trotted down the steps to join the others in front. He scanned for anything threatening before dumping expensive looking suitcases on the sidewalk next to the piles of other luggage, stacked high, apparently not caring about the wet, dirty pavement. Eight against one now. Jesus, how many more were inside? Pablo felt his hands tremble. He glanced at his wristwatch. 9:38. Nineteen minutes since he had phoned in sighting Foster. Dammit guys, where are you? The Arabic voices of Foster's men carried in the drizzly chill of the Saturday morning quiet. Some scolded into cell phones. Others paced in circles arguing with each other. All sounded panicky to flee their Swiss hideout. No doubt heavily armed to protect their most wanted charge. If he could fire off even one clean shot he had, he guessed, only seconds to clear out before they gave chase, ripping loose with their arsenal of weapons. A safe escape, hopefully. Eight, maybe more, against one, if those snatch cars didn't show. Block it out, he warned himself. Focus just on your target, which he did, after a bitter ironic thought. The CIA intended to abduct a top jihadist inciter of human bombs just as it had once kidnapped him…. PART ONE THE BEGINNING OF IT ALL CHAPTER 1SEARCHING FOR ACCOMPLICES Security House, a CIA satellite facility in some northern Virginia woods. Five o'clock on a wintry Tuesday morning may seem an unwise hour to seek an accomplice in a plot to undermine. But in his years with the Agency's Eyes and Ears Unit, Stuart Bishop had learned to pick up allies where and when he could. He knew the youth in question, Jake Strummer, was still on shift alone, and, he suspected, susceptible to persuasion as he punched in numbers on his speakerphone on his desk. "Jake, Stuart Bishop here," he boomed out in his bar-friendly manner as he meandered around his office. "Haven't had the pleasure till now. I wanted to catch you before you clocked out and congratulate you on your high marks in our training program. Before long, you'll be snooping around Europe like the rest of us. Welcome aboard." "Pleasure's mine, Mr. Bishop. I've heard lots 'bout you and some of the things you've done. All I can say is, whatever it takes to get the bad guys, I'm game." "I like your spirit. And Stuart, please. Just plain, old Stuart. When George moves up and I take over, you can call me Mr. So, how are things out your way at the apartment? Everything okay?" "Easy peasy. The usual gig. Keep the safehouse stocked with food, monitor for intruders, make sure Pablo has pocket change." "You lucky son of a gun, you. I'm jealous. Hey, friendly reminder. Make sure your cell is in the bedroom before you take off. He'll get a wake-up call around sixish." "Any problems with his snatch?" "With those guys? No way. They're pros." Stuart felt he was establishing a good rapport with the support staffer. "The Guatemala City media have received Pablo's personal items and photos in their mail this morning and think some gang kidnapped the son-of-a-b***h off the street. They're going nuts over it. The capital's become a magnet for bandits, etc. I've been monitoring them, while boning up on him." "Didn't you run him once? I thought you were up to speed." Stuart sensed an opening. "Not after Berlin. After what happened there, I read the summary damage assessment and washed my hands with the guy. Couldn't bring myself to read the unabridged report. When none other than George Hart himself shuffled him off to Guatemala, I thought good-bye, good riddance." "Well, he's back." "Tell me about it. I pulled an all-nighter reading the complete report, and let me tell you, it's the stuff of nightmares for any poor soul who has to work with that guy." "Don't you think you're being a bit harsh? George said he was a crack shot once and one of the best at evasion." A mild rebuke. George must have gotten to him beforehand, explained his views on Pablo. "You got that right. Once," Stuart said . "He was good at many things once, Jake. Sailing, mountaineering, whatever, before Berlin. That was then; this is now. Look, don't take my word for it. Read that full report." "Well, we'll see." Stuart puckered his lips, irritated. He sat down at his desk and spoke directly into the phone. "Once bitten, twice shy, Jake. He's become an operational risk." "I guess so." I guess so said, Stuart realized, without conviction. "Don't know about you," he replied, trying another way to persuade, "a guy freezing when a fellow agent's in danger tells me a whole lot." "Guess George believes in second chances. Cowardly or courageous, only time will tell." "There you go," Stuart said with forced goodwill. "We agree on something. Well look, I've enjoyed our little chat and again welcome abroad. I look forward to meeting you in person." He punched the disconnect. Maybe, he worried, he had pushed too hard. He flipped through notes on members of the unit equivocal about forcing Pablo to resign until he found the page with the name Jake Strummer. On that page, he jotted down the result of their chat: The unit's grad wasn't swayed. Stuart understood he still had much work to do with the fence-sitters. CHAPTER 2A SCREAM IN THE DARK A woman screamed. Pablo de Silva jerked awake, sweaty with panic. He glanced around. He was in the wrong bed, covered with the wrong blanket. He caught then a photo of the Lincoln Memorial on the opposite wall and recalled where he was, in a darkened room in D. C., not Berlin, and he hadn’t again dreamed a terrorist had stabbed his Katarina. A phone was ringing. His abduction in Guatemala City, that frenetic drive to the airport, the shout to rev the engines, and landing afterwards outside Washington had all happened moments ago, it seemed. He’d enjoyed little sleep in that safe house bed. Yet there the Agency was calling, he felt certain. No mercy at all. A luminous 6:30 on his wristwatch. Let them wait. He’d rest in the unthreatening dark while he could. Safety was too fragile to abandon quickly. No telling what they wanted. Finally he couldn’t ignore the call any longer. He groped behind to the headboard. There, cold metal and enamel, a lamp. The encryption cell phone, too. Then the gruff, unforgiving voice of Thelma Grubbins, loyalist to Hart, on the line without greetings. “George is back in the States?” he mumbled in sleepy reply to her summons. “The one and only is here,” she said. “Stuart, too. George is sending a driver around. You get face time with G. H. in an hour at Security House.” “But I arrived late last night.” He yawned and felt achy from his kidnappers' rough up. “One hour,” she snapped and hung up. No mercy indeed, he thought as he hung up too. The phone rang again. “You’ll stay the day,” Thelma added, after a mucous-loosening cough. Some gratitude, he thought after he had punched off again. He’d bribed and hacked into Guatemalan government computers in the dead of night to discover the movements of Interior Ministry forces. Idled away hours in some of the capital’s grubbiest cafés, hoping to overhear useful gossip. Risked more than he cared to think about in that dangerous Third World backwater. Yet no apologies calling at that hour. No explanation why George wasn’t in Paris. Her message in the harsh imperative, Miss Thelma Grubbins, George Hart’s go-to gal and spinster hatchet lady, the same as ever. On the bedside stand, he spotted plastic containers of pills to help him sleep, to boost his appetite. He had forsworn them because of side effects. Langley had provided them anyway. No thanks, guys. You’ve done enough to me. He kicked the blanket off in disgust, when he noticed how damp his boxer shorts and bed sheet were from his nightmare. Even in sleep, he couldn’t escape violence. Some days he wished he could suffer partial amnesia. Forget Berlin and Katarina’s murder and his loss of courage. Forget he’d signed with the Agency. He’d given them enough. CHAPTER 3A MEETING AT THE GULAG The driver was a hefty man packed into a military style coat. A glance his way, Pablo noticed, passed for a greeting as he hopped in. They sped west in the fast lane through morning traffic in silence. When at last he asked why the hurry, the driver just shrugged. If there was an emergency, that man could at least tell him something, he thought. But he took the hint; he’d have to wait. At last they reached an office complex in some northern Virginia woods. Pablo leaned forward, awed at the towers ahead and the lore he’d overheard about them. Within them, the CIA had plotted strategies against the then Soviet Union and its allies. But when the Cold War ended, the Agency had all but abandoned the brick-and-glass high-rises. It sold them off discreetly to a Japanese syndicate that had crammed into each of the stories lone practitioners and partnerships of CPAs, lawyers, and therapists. All but one tower, that is, the CIA sold. That one, a satellite facility, retained its secretiveness as well as the complex’s group name, Security House. The driver escorted Pablo into a side door marked as a service entrance, lit by a lone bulb overhead. “Fifth floor, Capital Export/Import.” Without another word he turned and walked away. “Damn it, Abdul, we hear terrorist chatter all over Europe too. London, Paris, Berlin. Why do you think we’re busting our ass on this? But we don’t know where they're going to strike.” Stuart Bishop, unshaven and with untidy hair, stood in the center of the room talking on his cell as he glanced at Pablo. Pablo smiled back reflexively, while he waited by the door in respectful silence. “Pal around with them. Funds from that Saudi foundation must go elsewhere besides mine victims. Are any aiding terrorists? Think, man, think. Right, no problem, I’ll hold.” Stuart, in a whisper, addressed a man silhouetted against the middle window to his right. “He's demanding more pay.” Then: “Still here, my man. Right, I’ll look into it. Remember, you’re one of our best assets in France. Find the end of that Saudi money trail, the world is yours.” He snapped shut his cell and clipped it to his belt. “Greedy little prick. Middle East cell phone traffic to Europe spiking off the chart, George, and he's trying to extort us.” He jerked out a document from his briefcase. “How much longer we keep filling his food bowl?”