Covert One 4 - The Altman Code
Read Covert One 4 - The Altman Code Online
Authors: Robert Ludlum
Covert One 4 - The Altman Code
On the north bank of the Huangpu River, giant floodlights glared down on
the docks, turning night into day. Swarms of stevedores unloaded trucks
and positioned long steel containers for the cranes. Amid the squeals
and rasps of metal rubbing metal, the towering cranes lifted the
containers high against the starry sky and lowered them into the holds
of freighters from across the world. Hundreds streamed in daily to this
vital port on China’s eastern coast, almost midway between the capital,
Beijing, and its latest acquisition, Hong Kong.
To the south of the docks, the lights of the city and the towering
Pudong New District glowed, while out on the swirling brown water of the
river itself, freighters, junks, tiny sampans, and long trains of
unpainted wood barges jostled for position from shore to shore, like
traffic on a busy Paris boulevard.
At a wharf near the eastern end of the docks, not far from where the
Huangpu curved sharply north, the light was less bright. Here a single
freighter was being loaded by one crane and no more than twenty
stevedores. The name lettered on the freighter’s transom was The Dowager
Empress; her home port was Hong Kong. There was no sign of the ubiquitous
uniformed dock guards.
Two large trucks had been backed up to her. Sweating stevedores unloaded
steel barrels, rolled them across the planks, and set them upright on a
cargo net. When the net was full, the crane arm swung over it, and the
cable descended. On its end was a steel hook that caught the light and
glinted. The stevedores latched the big net to the hook, and the crane
swiftly lifted the barrels, wheeled them around, and lowered them to the
freighter, where deckhands guided the cargo down into the open hold.
The truck drivers, stevedores, crane operator, and deckhands worked
steadily on this distant dock, fast and silent, but not fast enough for
the large man who stood to the right of the trucks. His sweeping gaze
kept watch from land to river. Unusually pale-skinned for a Han Chinese,
his hair was even more unusual—light red, shot with white.
He looked at his watch. His whispery voice was barely audible as he
spoke to the foreman of the stevedores: “You will finish in thirty-six
minutes.”
It was no question. The foreman’s head jerked around as if he had been
attacked. He stared only a moment, dropped his gaze, and rushed away,
bellowing at his men. The pace of work increased. As the foreman
continued to drive them to greater speed, the man he feared remained a
looming presence.
At the same time, a slender Chinese, wearing Reeboks and a black Mao
jacket over a pair of Western jeans, slid behind the heavy coils of a
hawser in a murky recess of the loading area.
Motionless, almost invisible in the gloom, he studied the barrels as
they rolled to the cargo net and were hoisted aboard The Dowager
Empress. He removed a small, highly sophisticated camera from inside his
Mao jacket and photographed everything and everyone until the final
barrel had been lowered into the hold and the only remaining truck was
about to be driven away.
Turning silently, he hid the camera inside his jacket and crab-walked
away from the brilliant lights until he was wrapped again in darkness.
He arose and padded across the wood planks from storage box to shed,
seeking whatever protection he could find as he headed back toward the
road that would return him to the city. A warm night wind whistled above
his head, carrying the heavy scent of the muddy river. He did not
notice. He was exultant because he would be returning with important
information. He was also nervous. These people were not to be taken
lightly.
By the time he heard footsteps, he was nearing the end of the wharf,
where it met the land. Almost safe.
The large man with the unusual red-and-white hair had been quietly
closing in, taking a parallel path among the various supply and work
sheds. Calm and deliberate, he saw his target tense, pause, and suddenly
hurry.
The man glanced quickly around. To his left was the lost part of the
dock, where storage and seagulls found their haven, while on the right
was a pathway kept open for trucks and other vehicles to go back and
forth to the loading areas. The last truck was behind him, heading this
way, toward land. Its headlights were funnels in the night. It would
pass soon. As his prey darted behind a tall pile of ropes on the far
left, the man pulled out his garotte and sprinted. Before the fellow
could turn, the man dropped the thin cord around his neck, yanked, and
tightened.
For a long minute, the victim’s hands clawed at the cord as it
tightened. His shoulders twisted in agony. His body thrashed. At last,
his arms fell limp and his head lolled forward.
As the truck passed on the right, the wood dock shuddered. Hidden behind
the mountain of ropes, the killer lowered the corpse to the planks. He
released the garotte and searched the dead man’s clothes until he found
the camera. Without hurrying, he walked back and retrieved two of the
enormous cargo hooks. He knelt by the corpse, used the knife from the
holster on his calf to slash open the belly, buried the points of the
iron hooks inside, and sealed them there by winding rope around the
man’s middle. With alternating feet, he rolled him off into the dark
water. The body made a quiet splash and sank. Now it would not float up.
He walked toward the last truck, which had paused as ordered, waiting,
and climbed aboard. As the truck sped away toward the city, The Dowager
Empress hauled up her gangway and let go her lines. A tug towed her out
into the Huangpu, where she turned downriver for the short journey to
the Yangtze and, finally, the open sea.
Tuesday, September 12.
Washington, D.C.
There was a saying in Washington that lawyers ran the government, but
spies ran the lawyers. The city was cobwebbed with intelligence
agencies, everything from the legendary CIA and FBI and the little-known
NRO to alphabet groups in all branches of the military and government,
even in the illustrious Departments of State and Justice. Too many, in
the opinion of President Samuel Adams Castilla. And too public.
Rivalries were notoriously a problem. Sharing information that
inadvertently included misinformation was a bigger problem. Then there
was the dangerous sluggishness of so many bureaucracies.
The president was worrying about this and a brewing international crisis
as his black Lincoln Town Car cruised along a narrow back road on the
northern bank of the Anacostia River. Its motor was a quiet hum, and its
tinted windows opaque. The car rolled past tangled woods and the usual
lighted marinas until it finally rattled over the rusted tracks of a
rail spur, where it turned right into a busy marina that was completely
fenced. The sign read: anacostia seagoing yacht club private. members only.
The yacht club appeared identical to all the others that lined the river
east of the Washington Navy Yard. It was an hour before midnight.
Only a few miles above the Anacostia’s confluence with the broad
Potomac, the marina moored big, open-water power cruisers and
longdistance sailing boats, as well as the usual weekend pleasure craft.
President Castilla gazed out his window at the piers, which jutted out
into the dusky water. At several, a number of salt-encrusted oceangoing
yachts were just docking. Their crews still wore foul-weather gear. He
saw that there were also five frame buildings of varying sizes on the
grounds. The layout was exactly what had been described to him.
The Lincoln glided to a halt behind the largest of the lighted
buildings, out of sight of the piers and hidden from the road by the
thick woods. Four of the men riding in the Lincoln with him, all wearing
business suits and carrying mini-submachine-guns, swiftly stepped out
and formed a perimeter around the car. They adjusted their night-vision
goggles as they scanned the darkness. Finally, one of the four turned
back toward the Lincoln and gave a sharp nod.
The fifth man, who had been sitting beside the president, also wore a
dark business suit, but he carried a 9mm Sig Sauer. In response to the
signal, the president handed him a key, and he hurried from the car to a
barely visible side door in the building. He inserted the key into a
hidden lock and swung open the door. He turned and spread his feet,
weapon poised.
At that point, the car door that was closest to the building opened. The
night air was cool and crisp, tainted with the stench of diesel. The
president emerged into it–a tall, heavyset man wearing chino slacks and
a casual sport jacket. For such a big man, he moved swiftly as he
entered the building.
The fifth guard gave a final glance around and followed with two of the
four others. The remaining pair took stations, protecting the Lincoln
and the side door.
Nathaniel Frederick (”Fred”) Klein, the rumpled chief of Covert-One, sat
behind a cluttered metal desk in his compact office inside the marina
building.
This was the new Covert-One nerve center. In the beginning, just a few
years ago, Covert-One had no formal organization or bureaucracy, no real
headquarters, and no official operatives. It had been loosely composed
professional experts in many fields, all with clandestine experience,
most with military backgrounds, and all essentially
unencumbered–without family, home ties, or obligations, either
temporary or permanent.
But now that three major international crises had stretched the
resources of the elite cadre to the limits, the president had decided
his ultrasecret agency needed more personnel and a permanent base far
from the radar screens of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Hill, or the
Pentagon. The result was this “private yacht club.”
It had the right elements for clandestine work: It was open and active
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with intermittent but steady
traffic from both land and water that followed no pattern. Near the road
and the rail spur but still on the grounds was a helipad that looked
more like a weed-infested field. The latest electronic communications
had been installed throughout the base, and the security was nearly
invisible but of cutting-edge quality. Not even a dragonfly could cross
the periphery without one of the sensors picking it up.
Alone in his office, the sounds of his small nighttime staff muted
beyond his door, Klein closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his
longish nose. His wire-rimmed glasses rested on the desk. Tonight he
looked every one of his sixty years. Since he had accepted the job of
heading Covert-One, he had aged. His enigmatic face was riven with new
creases, and his hairline had receded an inch. Another problem was on
the verge of erupting.
As his headache lessened, he sat back, opened his eyes, put his glasses
back on, and resumed puffing on his ever-present pipe. The room filled
with billows of smoke that disappeared almost as soon as he produced
them, sucked out by a powerful ventilating system installed specifically
for the purpose.
A file folder lay open on his desk, but he did not look at it. Instead,
he smoked, tapped his foot, and glanced at the ship’s clock on his wall
every few seconds. At last, a door to his left, beneath the clock,
opened, and a man with a Sig Sauer strode across the office to the outer
door, locked it, and turned to stand with his back against it.
Seconds later, the president entered. He sat in a high-backed leather
chair across the desk from Klein.
“Thanks, Barney,” he told the guard. “I’ll let you know if I need you.”
“But Mr. President–”
“You can go,” he ordered firmly. “Wait outside. This is a private
conversation between two old friends.” That was partly true. He and Fred
Klein had known each other since college.
The guard slowly recrossed the office and left, each step radiating
reluctance.
As the door closed, Klein blew a stream of smoke. “I would’ve come to
you as usual, Mr. President.”
“No.” Sam Castilla shook his head. His titanium glasses reflected the
overhead light with a sharp flash. “Until you tell me exactly what we’re
facing with this Chinese freighter—The Dowager Empress, right?—this one
stays between us and those of your agents you need to work on it.”
“The leaks are that bad?”
“Worse,” the president said. “The White House has turned into a sieve.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Until my people can find the source,
I’ll meet you here.” His rangy face was deeply worried. “You think we
have another Yinhe?”
Klein’s mind was instantly transported back: It was 1993, and a nasty
international incident was about to erupt, with America the big loser. A
Chinese cargo ship, the Yinhe, had sailed from China for Iran. U.S.
intelligence received reports the ship was carrying chemicals that could
be used to make weapons. After trying the usual diplomatic channels and
failing, President Bill Clinton ordered the U.S. Navy to chase the ship,
refusing to let it land anywhere, until some sort of resolution could be
found.