Coates bolted forward. “What! When?”
“A couple hours ago, at his hotel.”
“Tanner and Cahil were there?”
“Yes. They’re on the move now; they should be calling shortly. Did Gunston report Susanna missing? The DEA did — almost two weeks ago.”
Coates glanced at Sylvia, who nodded her approval. “The last time he checked in he said her reports were getting spotty. She was withdrawn … on edge. He was worried about her. Though he never said as much, I think he was worried she’d gone native.”
Dutcher knew the term. A “native” is a deep cover operative who becomes so immersed in his or her legend they lose touch with reality — and their mission. As with the Stockholm Syndrome, where a hostage comes to sympathize with his or her captors, undercover operatives often come to see the people in their alternate life as genuine; informants become friends, killers become lovers, and the operative’s mission becomes lost in the fog. Tanner had described Gunston as haggard. Was this why? Dutcher wondered. Had he realized his agent had gone over the edge?
“Maybe you better give me the whole story,” Dutcher said. “What was she doing for you?”
Again, Coates looked to Albrecht. She said, “Go ahead. If we decide to pull her in, Tanner and Cahil will have to do it. If we decide to keep her in play, they’ll have to take over.”
Coates nodded. “About ten months ago, Susanna approached us. She’d come across something she didn’t think the DEA could handle….”
When Coates finished talking, Dutcher realized they’d crossed into completely new territory. If Tanner had been anxious about Susanna’s disappearance before, this new information would be agonizing for him. Dutcher said, “How sure was she about this … Stephan?”
“She was sure. Over time she’s managed to catch snippets of conversation between him and his pals — the four Spetsnaz Tanner and Cahil tangled with. We’ve been able to piece together a history on him. He’s either who Susanna claims, or he’s somebody pretending to be him.”
“Which is nonsense,” Len Barber said.
“Agreed,” Dutcher replied, then said to Coates, “Does she have any idea what he’s up to?”
“No, but he’s moving toward something. His pace is picking up.”
Sylvia said, “What do you think, Dutch? Will Tanner take it? We need somebody to lay eyes on her — and pull her out if she’s gone over.”
Will he take it? Dutcher thought. Try to stop him. “He’ll take it.”
The speakerphone on the table rang; Sylvia pressed the button. “Yes?”
“Director Albrecht, I have a call for Mr. Dutcher. It came in land line, secure from Fort Meade.”
“Put it through.”
There were a few seconds of clicks and squelches, then Tanner’s voice: “Leland?”
“I’m here. We’re in Sylvia’s office with Len Barber and George Coates. Are you safe?”
“I think so. We’re in a Mainotel in Plancoet, about twenty-five kilometers from St. Malo. So far we haven’t seen any Wanted posters bearing our faces.”
“That’s a plus,” Dutcher replied. “Your guess about Gunston was right. He was a case officer, and Susanna’s controller.”
“A double in the DEA,” Tanner said. “Sylvia, not only are you getting lovelier with age, but you’re getting bolder.”
“Always the gentleman,” Sylvia replied. “I think when you hear the details you’ll understand our approach.”
“I’m listening.”
Dutcher said, “First of all, you need to know who you’re dealing with. The name Stephan is an alias. It’s Litzman, Briggs. Karl Litzman.”
Three thousand miles away, Tanner heard the words, but it took several moments for them to register. He gripped the cell phone a little tighter and squeezed his eyes shut. Litzman … Good god.
“Briggs, are you there?”
“I’m here. We’re sure about that?”
“We’re satisfied it’s him,” Sylvia replied.
“Give me the story.”
“Last fall Susanna was working undercover on distributor-level heroin,” Dutcher said. “She was laying the groundwork for a seeding purchase of about a thousand kilos. Her customers were a pair of soldiers from the ETA who were looking to convert the heroin into cash or arms. When Susanna arrived at the meeting she got a surprise. The ETA had brought along some bodyguards — Litzman and his team. He was going by the alias Stephan Bolz.”
Coates said, “The theory is the ETA had hired Litzman to make sure the shipment got where it was going,”
A solid theory, Tanner thought. For years both Spain and France had been tightening the noose around ETA cells operating in southern France and northern Spain. In the last year alone the French Navy’s GCMC, or Close Quarters Combat Group, had successfully boarded three ETA freighters and seized hundreds of thousands of dollars in weapons; at the border, Spain’s Grupos Antiterroristas Ruales, or GAR, had been successfully interdicting the ETA’s traditional overland supply routes.
Litzman’s background in Spetsnaz made him and his team superbly suited to protecting an ETA ship at sea. Compared to the loss of the heroin, Litzman’s fee had probably been incidental to the ETA.
“What happened at the meeting?” Tanner asked.
“Litzman’s appearance threw a wrench in the works,” Coates replied. “They were heavily armed and ready. Susanna aborted the sting; the French decided to hit the shipment as it left the country. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. Litzman, the ETA, and the heroin disappeared.”
“Are you saying Susanna recognized Litzman on sight?”
“So she said, and her interactions with him later confirmed it. She didn’t think the DEA was set up to handle somebody like him, and the French had their own agenda, so she approached us.”
Sylvia said, “We weren’t keen on poaching a DEA operation, but the chance was too good to pass up. To get Litzman I’d step on every damned toe in Washington.”
Tanner shared her conviction. Though his face had never appeared on any public wanted poster, Karl Litzman was one of the U.S.’s most wanted terrorists, and Briggs knew only too well why the German held that honor.
In December of 2001, as the focus of Operation Enduring Freedom was on the caves of Tora Bora along the Afghani-Pakistani border, a light company of fifty-eight Marines had been dispatched to Zibak, a village in Northern Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush, about twenty miles from the border with Turkistan, to investigate reports of an Al Qaeda redoubt.
As the company entered a ravine ten miles north of town, it came under heavy sniper and mortar fire. The first targets were the radiomen and their equipment, followed by the company commander, then the platoon and squad leaders. Leaderless and cut off from the outside world, the decimated platoon tried to retreat, but was boxed in.
Over the next ten hours the snipers whittled away at the Marines until, as night fell, those left alive were able to slip away under cover of darkness and link up with battalion headquarters in Eskatul. Of the fifty-eight that went into the ravine, only nine escaped.
A pair of Blackhawks dispatched to the area caught up with the sniper team outside Darwan, two miles from the Turkistan border. Four Taliban fighters were captured and eight were killed, but one — the team leader — managed to slip across the border. Interrogation of the prisoners revealed the man was a mercenary whom the Taliban had hired to lure U.S. troops into the Hindu Kush and ambush them. A week later, through informants and captured documents, investigators came up with a name: Karl Litzman.
In March of 2002, Tanner led a team of five men into Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to investigate a reported sighting of Litzman. On their second night in the city, an informant directed them to an apartment near the Great Chuysky Canal. Tanner and his team raided the apartment. There was an explosion. Only Tanner and one other man survived.