Covert One 4 - The Altman Code (23 page)

Concealed inside the hangar, Secretary of the Army Jasper Kott descended
the stairway, four aides following. His smooth features were hidden
behind black aviator glasses. As he approached the command car, the
driver stood at attention. Elegant as usual in a perfectly tailored,
three-piece suit, Kott nodded acknowledgment and stepped into the
backseat. His aides climbed into the Humvee.

There was already a passenger inside the command car–a uniformed man
who wore on his shoulders the single silver star of a brigadier general.

Sitting beside the far window, he drew on a thick cigar and exhaled
aromatic smoke. “The cigar bother you, Mr. Secretary?” Brigadier General
Emmanuel (”Manny”) Rose asked.

“Not if you need it to think, General.” Kott opened the window as the
car pulled away, the Humvee following.

A door the size of an outsized garage door rolled up in the shadowy
hangar, and the two vehicles drove through into the sweltering
Philippine day.

“On this assignment, I need it for patience.” Rose blew another cloud as
the tires droned over the tarmac. “You won’t believe these people.”

“Of course I will. I work in D. C.” Secretary Kott glanced out at the
palms and tropical vegetation. The hot air did not bother him. Mango
trees crowded together in the distance. Birds in violent colors flew
from the branches of hibiscus and bottlebrush trees. Ahead, a mirage
shimmered on the pavement. It was at least ten degrees hotter here than
in Washington– hot, humid, and fecund.

“You’ve got a point.”

The secretary questioned, “You think this al-Sayed prisoner is the real
thing? A top leader of the Mindanao Islamic guerrillas?”

“Sure looks like it.”

“Why? Because they want to hold on to him, get all the credit?”

“Those who don’t want to nail him to a wall and skin him alive, and
those who don’t want to make a fast deal and cut him loose so he’ll keep
muni about what they’ve been doing.”

“You’ve insisted we be present at all interrogations?” the secretary
pressed.

General Rose nodded, his jowls quivering, on the verge of outrage. “Damn
right. If they neglect our wishes, they don’t get any more aid or tech
training from us. Just to be sure, I’ve put my own men on the guard
detail.”

“Good.”

The general paused to smoke and watch the street. He seemed to see
nothing that disturbed him. He glanced at the secretary. “You brought a
team?”

“A CIA interrogation expert as well as an air force captain who speaks
Moro.” Kott did not bother to mention he had also brought his chef. “My
aide’s with them in the Humvee. Tomorrow, we’ll have a go at him.”

“Yeah. You will if you convince the Filipinos at the dinner tonight to
let us.”

Kott smiled confidently. “That won’t be a problem.”

Soon after, both vehicles arrived at the sprawling country estate that
was the temporary command headquarters of the American military mission,
courtesy of the Manila government. Making small talk for the benefit of
anyone who might be eavesdropping, General Rose escorted Secretary Kott
to his air-conditioned quarters to rest and freshen up before the all-
important dinner meeting tonight with the Filipino politicians and
military men.

“This evening then, General.” Kott extended his hand.

Rose shook it. He growled around the butt of his cigar, “I’ll be ready.

Get a good nap. You’re going to need it.”

As his air conditioner whistled from the corner of his suite, Kott
closed the door and waited five minutes. He opened it and peered in both
directions along the hallway. No one was in sight.

Crouched outside beneath a window of the frame building, a slim woman
wearing the uniform of a U.S. Air Force captain pressed a contact
microphone against the wall. She had arrived on the cargo jet with
Secretary Kott.

Inside his suite, Kott’s footsteps marched across the floor. There was
the click of keys on a keypad being depressed, and the sound of a
telephone receiver being lifted.

“I’m here,” he said. “Yes. I have to be back by six tonight. In two
hours? Fine. Where? The Corregidor Club? Right. I’ll be there.”

The receiver dropped into its cradle, a wooden chair creaked, footsteps
walked away, and finally shoes clattered onto the floor. Bed springs
sighed. Kott was relaxing before going to meet whomever he had been
talking to. Probably lying on the bed wide awake and looking up at the
ceiling where assorted strange insects waited to drop onto the mosquito
netting.

The air force captain was also Secretary Kott’s Moro interpreter. Her
name tag read Captain Vanessa Lim. She left the window. She was not
headed off to rest, and her name was not Vanessa Lim.

Hong Kong The most difficult action for an undercover agent was to do
nothing. Jon stood in the bow of the ferry, pretending to feast on the
kaleidoscopic cityape that filled the horizon. Although the skin on the
back of his neck puckered, he did not turn again to check the two men
who had been moving forward through the press of passengers, studying
clothes, faces, and the attitudes of everyone they passed. There was no
way they could know what the caller to Donk & Lapierre looked like. In
fact, the chance that Feng Uun or anyone else in China knew It. Col. Jon
Smith was even in Hong Kong was minimal.

But a minimal chance was still a chance. Possible, but not probable. As
Damon Runyon once said, “The race isn’t always to the swift, nor the
battle to the strong. But that’s the way to bet.” A matter of odds.

Smith remained at the front of the ferry, apparently unworried, no sign
he was aware anything unusual was occurring around him. He appeared
transfixed by all the exotic sights and sounds, as the ferry drew closer
to its terminal on Hong Kong Island.

When the boat slid and thudded along the pilings, deckhands in blue
uniforms pulled it in. The crowd moved forward, ready to trample onto
land the instant the ferry stopped and the gates opened. ]on joined
them. Above them, seagulls circled and cawed, while a wave of impatience
rushed through the waiting throngs. Finally, the gates opened. The surge
of humanity carried Jon down the wood ramp and up the concrete one. When
he looked back, the two hunters had vanished.

Manila Secretary of the Army Jasper Kott had changed into a
loose-fitting blue shirt, linen sports coat, tan slacks, and
bone-colored loafers. He was sitting relaxed, enjoying the stream of
cool air from the air conditioner, as he studied a special forces report
on a guerrilla force that had made a lightning incursion and strike on a
Filipino army garrison in northern Mindanao.

When someone knocked, he marked his place, set the report on a table
beside his chair, and went to the door.

The special forces sergeant who had driven him to the headquarters
stepped inside. “Good evening, sir.”

“All clear, Sergeant?”

“Yessir. Most of their people are taking siestas. Ours are busy with the
antirrorist training. Your car’s at the side door. The only sentry is
one of my guys.”

“I appreciate the help. Very discreet. Thank you.” Sergeant Reno smiled.
“We all need a little R and R sometimes, sir.” Kott smiled back, man to
man. “Then let’s go.”

He strode down the silent hallway, the sergeant respectfully three paces
behind. Outside, the same camouflage-painted command car waited, its
engine on. The secretary nodded approval: A quietly running engine
attracted far less notice than one starting suddenly.

He climbed into the backseat, which was empty. The sergeant closed his
door, got behind the wheel, and drove the car off. Bored by the poverty-
stricken scenery of greater Manila, Jasper Kott settled back, crossed
his arms, and considered how he would handle the afternoon’s tasks. Once
a highly successful executive in private industry, his last position was
CEO of Kowalski and Kott–K&K, Inc.–mass supplier of artillery gun
mounts to arms manufacturers around the globe. It was true he had grown
wealthy and influential, far more wealthy and influential than most of
his competitors realized. Still, numbers were useful only in keeping
score, not in judging satisfaction.

He was a fastidious man in all ways, from dress to personal habits, from
social relations to business deals. He had used his meticulousness as a
tool to disarm competitors. In today’s rough-and-earthy corporate
climate, he simply did not fit the mold. Who would suspect his raging
ambition? Who would credit him with a razor-sharp coldness that allowed
him to cut his losses without ever looking back? While others ignored
him as too prissy to be strong, he rose. By the time they noticed, they
were too far behind to hurt or stop him.

He had never had a. business opportunity to match the potential of this
new one. With pleasure, he contemplated what success would mean …
untouchable wealth, power beyond the imagination of his colleagues … a
guaranteed future of more deals, each bigger than the last–

On a quiet street, the sergeant pulled into the driveway of an imposing
house on a large lot in one of the better parts of Manila. A high hedge
rimmed the property. On the rolling green lawn, palms grew tall against
the sky, while tropical flowers in a rainbow of colors spread against
the white- plastered walls. It was a hacienda from the Spanish era,
stately and secluded.

Kott leaned forward. “Give me a few hours, Sergeant. You have your cell
with you?”

“Right here, sir.” The sergeant patted the shirt of his uniform. “Take
your time.”

Secretary Kott marched across terra-cotta tiles up to the long porch.

The front door was massive–rich mahogany, while the fittings, including
an ornate knocker in the shape of a coiled snake, were polished brass.

He knocked and sensed rather than saw a peephole open and close. The
door swung open, and a tiny Filipina bowed. She was no more than sixteen
and stark naked, except for a pair of high-heeled purple shoes and a
purple lace garter as high on her thigh as it could get. Kott’s
expression did not change.

She ushered him inside to a heavily furnished room where some twenty
other women of various ages in various stages of undress stood, sat, and
lounged. A well-stocked bar stretched along a wall. The teenager
continued on through the room, Kott following, the twenty pairs of eyes
assessing him. They climbed a sweeping stairway that could have been in
a noble house in Madrid. On the second floor, she led him down a
maroon-carpeted hall to the last door. The naked girl opened it, smiled
again, and stood aside.

Kott entered. The room was spacious, with gold-flecked maroon wallpaper,
gilded woodwork, a comfortable upholstered sitting area, a small bar,
and a giant four-poster bed. Still unspeaking, the girl closed the door,
and her footsteps faded away.

“Enjoy your usher, Jasper?” Ralph Mcdermid asked from his easy chair. He
was grinning from ear to ear, his joviality on display. His round body
and round face looked thoroughly relaxed.

“She’s my daughter’s age, for God’s sake, Ralph,” Kott complained. “Did
we have to meet in a place like this?”

“It’s excellent cover,” the chairman and CEO of the Altman Group said,
giving not an inch. “I’m known here. They protect me. Besides, I enjoy
the company, the merchandise, and the services, eh?”

“Everyone to their own taste,” Kott grumbled.

“How broad-minded and egalitarian of you, Jasper,” Mcdermid said. “Sit.

Sit down, dammit, and have a drink. Loosen up. We both know you’re not
the old grandpa you want everyone to think. Tell me about Jon Smith.”

“Who?”

“Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, M. D.” Mcdermid pressed a button on the
table beside the armchair where he sat, and a white-coated Filipino
materialized behind the bar.

“An army officer?” Kott shook his head. “Never heard of him. Why? What’s
he to us?” He called to the barman, “Vodka martini, straight up with a
twist.”

“He’s dangerous, that’s what he is. As for why he’s important … ”

Mcdermid related the events from the time Mondragon was killed to
Smith’s extraction from the Chinese coast.

“He’s got a copy of what the ship’s actually carrying? Holy–”

“No,” Mcdermid interrupted. “He nearly had a copy, but we took it back.

I don’t know whether he saw it, or understood it if he did. But
Mondragon definitely did, which no longer matters since that bastard is
dead. However, here we walk a fine line: We want them to know what The
Dowager Empress is carrying, but not be able to prove it.”

The barman arrived with Kott’s martini on a sterling tray. Kott sipped
appreciatively. “So there’s no problem. We’re go then?”

“We’re all-go, but I wouldn’t say there’s no problem.” Mcdermid held up
his empty highball glass and angled it toward the barkeep, who
immediately went to work to replace it. “I doubt Smith, or whoever
employs him, is going to give up.”

“What do you mean, whoever employs him? He’s got to be CIA. They recruit
army personnel sometimes.”

“I meant exactly what I said. As far as my people, and apparently the
Chinese secret police, can figure, he doesn’t belong to the CIA or to
any of the other of our intelligence agencies.”

Kott scowled. “You said he works for USAMRIID, and that’s the excuse he
used to enter China. So he’s probably a one-time CIA asset. But he
failed to get his job done. So now he’s out, and he’s probably out of
our hair, too.”

“Perhaps. But my people say he’s very skilled and hardly sounds like a
one-time recruit.”

Kott drank more deeply. “Some competitor of yours looking to hurt you?”

“That’s possible, I suppose. Some renegade agent. FBI maybe, considering
how they’re getting around these days. But whatever he is, all of us had
better be extraordinarily cautious … for a multitude of reasons.”

“Of course.” Kott drained the martini, set the glass down. “But for now,
we’re on course?”