End Game (32 page)

“I'll deny everything if you use my name,” she said. “I just want you to know that from the beginning. You won't use a recorder or take written notes, anything like that.”

Otto nodded. Last year Pete had coached him on the primary principle of being a good interrogator. “Keep your mouth shut,” she had told him. “Know the answers to the questions you ask, and then let the subject do all the talking. And especially don't say a thing when it seems like they're done. Let them fret. They'll fill in the silences, because they'll either be afraid of you, or more often than not, they'll try to impress you.”

The woman stared at him but then looked away as their drinks came.

“Would you like to order?” the waiter asked them.

“Not yet,” she said. She took a deep draught of her martini, and Otto nearly winced, seeing her lack of reaction to the raw alcohol.

“You must have already guessed what was going on; otherwise, you wouldn't have sought me out.”

Otto sipped his merlot. It wasn't bad, though when he'd lived in France, even the table wines—the
vins ordinaires
—were better.

“Everyone was so frantic to find Saddam's WMDs, they jumped on the yellow cake story. And even when it looked as if that wouldn't pan out, they couldn't just walk away. They started looking for nerve gas and biological weapons mobile factories.”

Otto wanted to talk for her, lead her to cutting to the chase, but he just nodded.

She finished her second martini and held the glass up to the waiter for another. The alcohol was like water to her.

“They needed the justification so badly, they were willing to lie to make it true. But you can't imagine the pressure all of us were feeling. It even filtered down to the janitors, who weren't allowed into the offices until someone signed off that any scrap of paper with the least bit of sensitive material had been accounted for—either locked up or shredded.

“Finally people started whispering about the
it.
‘It was in place. It would convert the critics. Make believers out of them all. It showed we had been right from day one. Saddam had sold out his own people. Something Israel had been warning about from the start. After all, bin Laden was only one problem; we had much bigger fish to fry.'”

She fiddled impatiently with her empty glass. “It was about then that my husband and I began having our troubles. I was spending too much time at work, and he was traveling all the time. And not alone.”

Pete did caution that if they seemed to be wandering off course, to jog them. “But lightly,” she'd said.

“Any idea what the
it
might have been?” he asked.

She laughed, the sound ragged. She was a big drinker, but Otto figured she was also a heavy smoker. “No one wanted to come out and actually say something specific. Everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Otto sipped his wine.

“Someone was going to have to find the damned thing before it was too late, for Christ's sake. Don't be dense.”

Otto waited for nearly a full minute, until the waiter had brought Ms. Fegan's third drink, before he pulled out folded sheet of paper and laid it on the table.

“I won't talk to you if you try to take notes,” the woman said.

“No pencil, no pen,” Otto said. Though he'd played around with superthin tablets that could be rolled up or folded and still record sounds and video, this was only plain paper.

“The last I heard, it had been moved, and only a handful of people on the ground knew where it was, and just about everyone was frantic to find out.” She took a drink, her hand steady. “But that was more than ten years ago.”

She knocked back her drink and looked for the waiter.

“Why don't we have some dinner first?” Otto said.

“Fuck you,” she said, but not harshly.

Pete had warned that sometimes an interrogation would come to a dead end, and then you'd have to pull a rabbit out of the hat.

“What if there's no rabbit?” Otto had asked.

“There's usually at least one right under your nose.”

“Have you ever heard of the sculpture
Kryptos
, over at the CIA?”

She nodded. “I went over one time with Bob, and we were given a tour. It's in one of the courtyards, as I remember, some sort of a coded message chiseled into the plates.”

“Four plates, actually, three of which have been decrypted, but the fourth has stumped all the code breakers until a few days ago.”

The woman just looked at him.

“We think it has something to do with what was hidden in the hills above Kirkuk.”

“That's not possible. I remember we were told that the sculpture was dedicated in the early nineties.”

“The message on the fourth panel was changed in the past five years or so,” Otto said. “Would you like to know what it says?”

“This is bullshit,” the woman said. But she nodded.

Otto read from the paper. “‘And God said let there be light, and there was light, and the light was visible from horizon to horizon. All was changed, all was never the same. And God said let there be progress.'”

The waiter came and asked if Ms. Fegan would like another drink, but she declined and he left.

“The last line was: ‘And there was peace.'” Otto looked up at her. “About what you guys were working for, wasn't it? A reason to take Saddam out, so Iraq could be rebuilt?”

“But it didn't work out that way, did it? In more ways than one. And now we're stuck with one hell of a big problem no one knows how to fix.”

“What's buried out there?”

“Figure it out for yourself,” the woman said as she got her purse and started to rise.

“Someone thinks they know, and is willing to kill for it. So far at least eight people are dead.”

“Not my problem.”

“I think I know who moved it and why, but at least tell me who buried it in the first place.”

She was frightened, and she started to move away, but Otto jumped up and caught her arm.

“Why did you agree to talk to me in the first place if you weren't willing to tell me something I already didn't know?”

“Leave me alone,” she said. She pulled her arm away and scurried downstairs.

Otto left a fifty-dollar bill on the table and followed her just as she was leaving through the front door.

She turned and spotted him, then darted out into traffic at the same time a black Range Rover accelerated down 15 E Street NW, hitting her full on, tossing her body in front of a taxi coming in the opposite direction.

The SUV continued up toward Union Station, its license plate light out.

 

FIFTY-SIX

It was seven in the evening local when their Gulfstream landed at Ben Gurion and taxied to an Israeli Air Force hangar. As soon as the engines spooled down, the wheels chocked by two ground crewmen, the hatch was opened and the stairs lowered.

“We've been instructed to remain aboard,” Roper called back from the cockpit.

“As soon as possible, refuel and work out a flight plan for Ramstein,” McGarvey said. “If we're not back in twenty-four hours, leave without us.”

A dark-green Mercedes C-Class pulled up, and a short slightly built man wearing khaki slacks and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, got out from the driver's side and came aboard.

“Mr. Director, welcome to Tel Aviv. My name is Lev Sharon, and we met once a few years ago just before you moved off the seventh floor.”

They shook hands. “You're Ariel's son?” McGarvey asked.

“Nephew, actually,” he glanced briefly at Alex. “The fuel truck should be here in the next five or ten minutes, so we should be able to get you turned around and out of here well within the hour. But we're curious as to why you came, unannounced.”

“We called ahead for permission to land, and were given it.”

“Yes, of course. But this is an unscheduled visit, and you certainly didn't come as tourists. So we'd like to know why you're here.”

“Are you still working for the Mossad?”

Sharon was young, but his shoulders were already sloped, his face filled with lines as if he were a man in his sixties, and not in his late thirties. “I can tell you this, of course. We're all friends here. Yes, I am.”

“Then you have heard about the problems we've had at Langley.”

“We heard some back-burner rumors, that there may have been a murder on your campus.”

“Four.”

Again Sharon glanced at Alex, who stared back. “What does this have to do with Israel?”

“We've traced a former CIA NOC to a Turkish Airlines flight from Paris scheduled to land in about an hour,” Alex said. “She's traveling under the work name Lois Wheeler.”

Sharon's expression of mild interest did not change. “Yes?”

“She sent a message through VIP World Travel on the Champs-Élysées to a man she only indentified as George, who she wanted to meet. He replied she should come.”

“What does this have to do with us?”

“The travel agency is a tool of the Mossad—has been for years, since the Eichmann business—and there was a pro phrase she had been instructed to use if she wanted to initiate contact.” A pro word or phrase was a code of the sort Alex had used.

“Does the CIA have any idea who this George might be?” Sharon asked McGarvey.

“We think he works, or may have at one time worked, for the Mossad. We're simply following a lead to see where it takes us.”

“And here you are. And what do you expect will happen?”

“We'd like to meet the flight without her knowing we're here, and find out who she meets and where she goes.”

Sharon, who'd been leaning over the back of one of the seats, abruptly turned around and got off the airplane.

“That didn't go so well,” Alex said, but McGarvey held up a hand for her to keep still.

From where he sat, he could see Sharon standing next to his car. The Israeli was talking to someone on a cell phone.

At one point Sharon looked up and spotted McGarvey in the window. He turned away.

“He doesn't know what to do with us,” McGarvey said. “He's called for orders.”

“What do you think?” Alex asked.

“He'll either let us in, or he'll order us to leave.”

“If the latter?”

“We'll give Pete the heads-up, and have the chief of station here meet the plane.”

“Then we lose.”

“We'll have gotten their attention,” McGarvey said noncommittally. He was more interested in her reaction than in Sharon's or the Mossad's. But her expression was neutral.

Sharon got off the phone and came back aboard. “We'll see if someone meets the plane and pulls your NOC aside when she presents herself at immigration.”

“George?” Alex asked.

“It won't be one of us. No one knows who George is. Nor was any message received from the travel agency. We're just as mystified as you are.”

“We'd like to be there,” McGarvey said.

“Are you armed?”

“Yes.”

“Your weapons stay here,” Sharon said. “I want your word on it.”

McGarvey took out his Walther PPK and laid it on the seat table.

Sharon smiled. “We wondered if you still carried the Walther.”

“An old friend.”

*   *   *

The Turkish Airlines flight arrived at the gate in Terminal 3 exactly on time, eight minutes later. McGarvey and Alex watched an overhead monitor one level up from the immigration hall as the first-class and business passengers began emerging from the arrivals gate.

Sharon and a female introduced as Sheila, in jeans and a khaki military shirt, the sleeves rolled up and buttoned above the elbows, waited with them.

When those passengers were off and the tourist class began unloading, Sheila stepped up. “Maybe she's not on the flight.”

“She's a professional; she's biding her time,” Sharon said.

“She got a reply from George, so she's expecting someone will be meeting her,” Alex said. “Could be she thinks she'll be assassinated.”

Sharon was surprised. “Here, in the airport?” he asked.

“No, wherever George is waiting for her.”

“There may be no George,” Sharon said.

“Then who answered her message at the travel agency?”

“I have no idea,” Sharon said. He turned to McGarvey. “And neither do my signals people who monitor such traffic. Which either means she was lying, or your information is unreliable, or the reply came from Paris.”

“Either that or your signals people are unreliable or you're lying,” Alex shot back.

“Lev?” Sheila said.

“I thought your people were more efficient than that,” Alex said.

Pete came from the gate area.

“It's her,” McGarvey said.

She was tucked in behind a knot of a dozen tourist passengers, and she glanced up at the ceiling camera and winked.

“Resourceful woman,” Sharon said. “She knows someone is watching her.”

“George,” Alex said. “How long before she's through with immigration and your people grab her?”

“Maybe twenty minutes. Depending on how fast her luggage is delivered.”

“She only has a purse and a carry-on.”

“Ten minutes,” Sharon said.

“Good, because I need to take a pee,” Alex said. “Would you like to come and watch?” she asked Sheila.

“I'd be delighted,” the Mossad operative said.

“Not such a good idea,” McGarvey said.

“Go with her,” Sharon told the woman. “I'm not having anyone wander around the airport unescorted this morning. Especially no one from the CIA.”

 

FIFTY-SEVEN

Cameras were everywhere in the terminal, and as Pete approached the passport lane, she was certain Mac and Alex were watching a monitor somewhere near. The issue was who else was here, waiting for her.