Who was she working for?
He laid his head back and closed his eyes, but his mind was racing. He didn’t fall asleep until much later, when the first light of dawn crept above the horizon and lit the sky a dead, ashen gray.
60
It’s none of your business. Leave it. It can only go badly for you.
Philip Palumbo mulled over the words, then leaned across the front seat of his car and removed his service sidearm from the glove compartment. It was because nobody took a stand that the world was in such sorry shape.
The pistol was a Beretta 9mm, left over from his days as an officer with the 82nd Airborne. He’d given fourteen years to the military, including his time as a cadet at West Point, and advanced as high as major before getting out. There were plenty of opportunities in private enterprise for a man with his background, but he’d never had much of an interest in making money. Seven weeks after signing his separation papers, he put his name on a contract with the Central Intelligence Agency. And despite all that he’d seen and all that he’d done, he still considered it the best decision he’d ever made. He did not relish giving it all up.
He checked that the magazine was full, chambered a round, and clicked down the safety.
The house was a two-story colonial with forest-green shutters and a shake roof. He took the stairs two at a time and rang the bell. A slim, unprepossessing man wearing a gray cardigan, bifocals hanging from a chain around his neck, opened the door. “There you are, Phil,” said Admiral James Lafever, Deputy Director of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. “A matter of some urgency, I take it.”
Palumbo entered the home. “I appreciate you seeing me at such short notice.”
“No problem at all.” Lafever led the way into a spacious foyer. He was a workaholic and lived alone. “Can I get you some coffee?”
Palumbo declined.
Lafever walked into the kitchen and poured himself a mug of steaming coffee. “I understand that you got solid information out of Walid Gassan that helped prevent an attack.”
He knows, thought Palumbo. Someone’s tipped him off.
“Actually, that’s why I’ve come.”
Lafever added some sugar to his coffee, then signaled for Palumbo to go ahead.
“On my way back from Syria, I got a call from Marcus von Daniken, who heads up the Swiss counterintelligence service. He was investigating the murder in Zurich of a man named Theo Lammers, a Dutch national who was shot outside his house. It was a professional job. Clean. No witnesses. Lammers owned a business that designed and manufactured sophisticated guidance systems. On the side, he built drones. Unmanned aerial vehicles. Small ones, big ones, you name it. Von Daniken was looking into it when a colleague of Lammers also got killed: an Iranian by the name of Mahmoud Quitab who was residing in Switzerland under the work name of Gottfried Blitz. Any of this sound familiar?”
“Should it?”
“With all due respect, sir, I think it might ring a few bells.”
Lafever added some milk to his coffee. When he returned his attention to Palumbo, his expression had changed. The social portion of the visit had officially concluded. “Go on, Phil. Let’s save my part for the end.”
Palumbo knew an order when he heard it. “I called Marcus to fill him in on the details of Gassan’s interrogation.”
“You mean regarding Gassan’s involvement in a plot to shoot down an airliner?”
“That’s correct. Von Daniken was surprised, to say the least. It turns out that the two deceased gentlemen he was looking into were Gassan’s co-conspirators.”
“Quite a coincidence.” Lafever’s voice made clear that he knew it was anything but.
Palumbo went on. “The next day, von Daniken received a report from the coroner that both victims were killed by someone who liked to dip his bullets in poison. This coroner had asked around if anyone had ever come across a similar case. One of his colleagues at Scotland Yard knew exactly what he was talking about. The man was a former British Marine, and had seen that same poison used in El Salvador back in the early eighties. I guess it was a common practice among the Indians down there. Some kind of local voodoo to ward off evil spirits. The Englishman shared his belief that it was us that trained them. According to him, whoever killed Lammers and his partner had at one time or another been working with the CIA. Von Daniken wants to know if we have an op running on his turf. Sir, if we have credible information about a cell looking to take down an airliner in Swiss airspace, it’s our duty to keep them in the loop.”
“And what did you tell him?” asked Lafever.
“I said I’d look into it.”
“So you haven’t spoken to him since?”
Palumbo shook his head. “You were running the station in San Salvador back then. Wasn’t Mourning Dove one of your operations?”
“That’s classified information.”
“I have classified clearance. One of the locals was recommended for recruitment. His name was Ricardo Reyes. His mother was half Indian. He did some training up at the Farm, then was sent overseas. He’s still on payroll.”
“Been digging, eh?”
“I’m guessing he’s the one who pulled the trigger.”
Admiral Lafever stepped closer and Palumbo could smell the coffee on his breath. “What concern of yours is one of my ops?”
Palumbo shifted his weight and felt the pistol digging into his back. “None. I’m out of my depth here. It’s just that I was able to track down some info on Lammers, the man who was shot and killed in Zurich.”
“And so?”
“Sir, we’ve got a file ten inches thick on the man. He was on our payroll for ten years. He worked in industrial espionage and was run out of our London substation. He fell off the books in 2003. I asked myself why in the world was Walid Gassan delivering explosives to men even remotely affiliated with the U.S. government. Something didn’t feel right to me about the whole thing. I made some calls around town to ask if Lammers had gone over to the other side.”
“What did you find out?”
“Oh, he’d gone over to the other side, alright. Lammers was picked up by the Defense Department two years back. At the time of his death, he was working as a consultant to the Defense Intelligence Agency. Admiral, can you tell me what in God’s name we’re doing taking out American agents?”
“I thought you’d be more concerned about why the Pentagon is trying to take down an airliner.”
“That’s my next question.”
Palumbo had been expecting a tirade. Instead, Lafever put down his coffee cup and smiled bleakly. “Are you familiar with a unit called Division?”
“Division? No, sir, I’m not.”
“Didn’t think so.” Lafever led him by the elbow toward a sliding door in the kitchen. “Let’s go outside. I need a smoke.”
Palumbo followed Lafever onto the back patio and down a flight of stairs into his backyard. It was a cold evening, the sky grim and forlorn. Their feet crunched in the snow as they ambled through a thicket of barren trees.
“It’s that Austen. He’s the problem,” said Lafever, shaking loose a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros. “Crazy Christian sonuvabitch will have me yet. Between all his prayer meetings and fundamentalist mojo, he can’t keep his fingers out of the other guy’s pie.”
“Do you mean Major General John Austen of the Air Force?”
“The one and only. It started eight years back, even before 9/11. The boys at the Pentagon wanted to start mounting clandestine operations on foreign soil. They were pissed off at how terrorists were nailing our overseas installations and had taken to going around town saying that we at CIA couldn’t do squat to stop them. The Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the bombings of our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the numerous attacks against U.S. multinationals operating abroad. Austen went to the president and asked if he could put together a team of operators and give it a shot. The president didn’t need much convincing. He’d been riding us hard to find out who was behind the attack on the USS Cole and we weren’t able to help him. Austen’s team found the culprits lickety-split. Thirty days later, the president signed a National Security Presidential Directive authorizing the Defense Department to run units overseas.