The Killing Ploy

Chapter 2

“For now promise him whatever. We’re at war, Stuart. In war you risk,” George added, before looking over his shoulder, alert to Pablo. “Well, our wayfarer son.” He shuffled past the desk into the glare of the overhead light, a shambles of a man with a too bright smile and a hand extended.

Pablo stared ahead, unable to reconcile the robust chief he had known with the one before him. “George,” he said, gripping his hand, which felt oddly limp, and did he detect the smell of liquor?

“You remember Stuart,” Hart said.

Stuart merely nodded his way before returning to studying the thick document.

George, Pablo noticed, had turned gaunt, as though suffering a wasting disease.

“My wife brought some kolaches, if you want any,” George said.

Kolaches, a Czech pastry…that Guatemalan rumor was true, after all, Pablo realized. Devout Catholic George must have divorced and remarried that East European analyst.

Other gossip, though, concerning his sister’s murder in a Nairobi bombing had seemed too outrageous to believe. A depressed George no longer caring if the Agency planned to move his unit out of the Paris embassy to a more secure building. Parisian police arresting an unkempt George for vagrancy. George, supposedly on vacation, but really ensconced at the Hôtel de Crillon, across from the American embassy, fixated on checking French-provided security. Pablo had heard much he hadn't been able to verify until now. Now the man stood just feet away, looking like he had suffered an internal breakage and let himself go, making the whispers seem true. One George had died. Another, a fatigued stranger, had been born.

On a table next to a sofa between the desk and near wall, Pablo noticed his photos of the corrupt generalissimo, still in their envelope.

George handed him a cup of coffee. “Palace intrigue, and here I am. In this gulag for consultations and tests for supposed stress.” He sagged his crumpled self down into the sofa and waved Pablo over to join him.

“Palace intrigue?” Stuart noted, still off to the side. “That’s sugarcoating it. They dumped us in the boonies because you blew the whistle on Nairobi.”

“Someone had to call it an intelligence fiasco, Stuart.” George faced Pablo. “So young man, a pleasant flight?”

“Flying for hours in a little tri-engine?” Pablo said, after tasting the coffee. It was too strong for more than another polite sip. It might keep him awake. He had trouble enough sleeping.

“Listen mister,” Stuart said, “unpleasant folks in Guatemala City suspect, A, you work for us. And B, you used drop sites for intel about a drug cartel. Your hotelier cover got awfully thin. You should be damn thankful you're out of there.”

“There’s been a murder in a Paris hotel that might interest you,” George said.

Pablo glanced across to George, his shift in the conversation as graceless as his rumpled appearance.

“Hotel security found an American, a Greg Bradford, dead in his suite,” George continued, "with his passport missing. The hotel alerted the police. They notified the FBI’s legal attaché at our Paris embassy, who put us in the loop. We've since learned he was the executive VP at RCB-Defense Systems, a San Diego high-tech outfit with major security issues, including a missing laptop. Here.” He pushed across the table two glossy color photos.

Pablo glanced at the first one. A jagged gash on the crown of the victim's bloody head. Brain matter oozing down his dark hair. Blood pooling on the carpet. Pablo felt his stomach lurch. Nuns r***d; newlyweds shot outside his hotel; Katarina murdered; he had witnessed too much violence to linger over still more. He nudged both back without looking at the second one, without comment.

“So far,” George said, “the FBI hasn’t found witnesses or prints, but Stuart and I have theories. Terrorists might use the passport for a hit. Or maybe Russian organized crime paid Bradford for his defense secrets. San Diego is, after all, in the technology coast that runs through Los Angeles. For whatever reason, they might have killed him and faked a terrorist act to throw us off. Stuart and I lean toward a major terrorist attack.

“The head of Covert Ops/Europe has tasked me to find an agent from my unit, past or present, to liaise with the FBI on this Bradford murder. The murder did, after all, happen on our turf, the Continent. I’d like you on board. Are the missing passport and laptop connected? Something more involved? Something bad may be out there, but we need more than a hunch. Don’t worry, there’ll be little chance of violence. It’s strictly fact-finding. See if this murder has a foreign angle. If so, we’ll take it from there.”

“And in return?”

“You become your own man,” George said. “No more paperwork tedium or trying to please rich guests. No more waiting for the occasional drop.”

His hunch had been right. Langley had put watchers in at the hotel. Bastards.

“You’ve voiced unhappiness about Guatemala, we’ve heard,” George continued. “Here’s your chance to get your juices flowing again.”

They must have also contacted the Swiss authorities to let them read his letters to his brother in prison. Still, the thought of no more case officer breathing down his neck intrigued him.

A man with pockmarked, street-rough features stepped inside the office. Johnny Rake, senior communication chief, brushed aside his headset’s microphone. “Paris, line two.”

George reached for the phone on the table. “How’s my Number Three doing?” he asked. After listening a moment, he snatched a pencil and pad on the table. “His what's missing?” All good-natured pretense gone, he scribbled rapidly. “Screw hospital rules. Stay by his side till he regains consciousness…. Don’t argue with me again. Just do it. You’re his concerned wife, sister, whatever. See if he mumbles anything.” Without waiting for any reply, he cradled the phone and turned to Stuart. “That woman’s got too much of a mind of her own. Get her transferred, when we return to Paris.”

Then to Pablo: “A few hours ago, the French found an American at the Hotel Royale Bonaparte, a Carlos Dean, with his head nearly bashed in. His papers showed he’s a senior VP at the same defense contractor as Greg Bradford. His money was still on him. His passport wasn't. Pablo, at least hear us out about liaising with the FBI.”

Pablo caught as much of a plea as a prideful man could utter. And he noticed something in the moist, brown eyes. George, clever? Yes. Resourceful? Of course. But in agony? Never until that moment had he thought that way about his former chief. Yet pain showed. He said he wanted to hear more.

“Splendid!” George said. “The FBI is already looking into Mr. Bradford’s death and seeing if there's a terrorist angle. It detailed Nick Vickers, a top counterterrorism honcho from their New York field office to San Diego to take over from an alcoholic on leave. He'll work within the Joint Terrorism Task Force there. Watch your back with him. He doesn’t always let the right hand know what the left is doing.”

Does anyone in this business? Pablo wondered. “I’ll keep that in mind. If I agree, what about the hotel staff after I leave?”

“Oh, we’ll deal with that.” George dismissed further discussion with a contemptuous wave; Pablo’s concern seemed the minutest of problems. “Stuart, give our boy some background in your dacha .” He pushed himself up and moved to his desk, already absorbed in another part of his day’s agenda.

Stuart Bishop led the way out grim-faced, like a man instructed to attend a funeral.

CHAPTER 4THE PRAGUE COLLOQUIUM

Stuart led him past a room where, on the far wall, clocks ticked off the times in four European capitals. “What was all that palace intrigue and Nairobi talk about?” Pablo asked.

“Bad stuff—the details in my office where I have your undivided attention—happened in Nairobi while you were in Guatemala. That bad stuff blew back to George.”

“And the European angle?”

“The bad stuff started in our bailiwick, Europe. Many working there, George included, missed the warning. He accepted responsibility, while fingering some Langley mullahs…a big no-no. Now it’s a grilling over his health plus justifying our Eyes and Ears budget. The mullahs really want him out of the Agency. But George won’t let them squeeze him. After Nairobi, Langley recalled him from Paris for an accounting. He defiantly brought some of his section to continue our work. Here we are."

The room was drab, Pablo noticed when they entered. A heater in the far corner. A card table in the middle, two metal folding chairs on either side. Beside the nearest one to him a trash basket with FOR SHREDDING taped to its side.

Stuart pushed shut his office door. “Christ, it’s the Arctic in here.” He dropped his briefcase onto the carpet, crossed to the heater, switched it on, then smiled bitterly as he sat down. “Since Nairobi, those mullahs have ensured we’re the last to get fed. So we have to make do here till George can finagle more funding.”

He flipped to a page of a legal pad filled with writing. "The background so you’ll understand our urgency,” he began, not waiting for Pablo to sit. “George is still too upset to brief, so the honor's mine. Last year’s colloquium, an academic front to the uninvited. But for those privileged to attend a de facto camp for Agency officers, needing R&R, and the trigger for all that's followed." He paused, letting the cryptic comment hang, while he took a quick sip of coffee.

“The organizers held it," he continued, "in a Czech castle in some woods where attendees could relax during the day. Nighttime offered a banquet. The third evening during dinner, a waiter slipped George a sealed note. When he slit it open, he noticed familiar writing, so off he went, curious, to one of the towers. On the last of the steps he heard a voice greet him and recognized it immediately. Count Dracula.”

“Vlado?” Pablo asked, surprised.

“None other than, and a top Czech intelligence officer these days. Still with that sickly pallor and black hair greased back. They embraced, of course—two former Cold War opponents, right?—now allies. They chatted awhile before Vlado came to the point: an anonymous tip received, a police raid on an apartment in Prague, and disturbing documents uncovered. Among them, a business card from someone in the Saudi Embassy and a few bank deposit receipts. A paymaster for terrorists, according to Vlado. George thought that assumption flimsy, but said he’d mull it over.

“The next afternoon, Pablo, a shock to everyone…rushed goodbyes from George to stunned friends and a taxi to Prague’s airport. So much for R&R.

“Back to our Paris embassy to arrange a closed door meeting with Senate Intelligence. Then the crush of, what seemed at the time, weightier issues: drugs, arms smuggling, the Russian mafia, and hacking. George got sidetracked—understandable, considering what was on our plate, as I tried to explain to him—till terrorists exploded that bomb in Nairobi. Afterwards, after the postmortem and after he had buried his sister, he understood the significance of Vlado’s prescience. He blames himself for not taking the warning more seriously. He’s promised himself not to repeat his mistake. So he’s calling in his chits and asking each agent a favor in return: Check to see if his fear about another major terrorist attack has substance.”

Several raps sounded on the door. “I'm briefing, dammit!” he shouted.

A stubby woman with a wild spray of reddish hair crooked her head inside. “God wants you,” she said, after a heaving cough. “A four-alarm fire.” She glanced at Pablo, facial fat pinching her eyes into a suspicious squint, but she uttered nothing.

Pablo forced a smile her way. Thelma Grubbins still looked like a frumpy 1930s immigrant, just off the boat at Ellis Island. They were a toxic mix, he knew. But for their work, they’d never associate with each other. He resented her patronizing; she, his inexperience. Berlin had only solidified her opinion.

As Stuart pulled shut the door, Pablo glanced at the legal pad. It was a status roster of the dead and wounded with some names crossed out and an explanatory note added.

Henri d’Esperey was there. A brilliant, yet bored aristocrat. But Henri had found salvation in George’s unit and went on to score first in a Break and Enter Seminar by hacking a drug cartel’s Panamanian accounts. Poor Henri, Pablo reflected. Four months ago, found shot in—

“You got that right, Pablo.”

Pablo flicked his eyes across to the doorway.

“Bad things happened to us while you were in Guate City,” Stuart continued.

“Henri seemed so competent during training,” Pablo said, recovering from his surprise.

“But not out in the field and that’s what matters.” Stuart shut the door and crossed to the card table. “Something else happened, while you were away. Nasty rumors from Katarina’s surveillance team about you not backing her up that day in Berlin.”