Executive Treason (26 page)

He needed Depp alive. He didn’t know if he was armed, but he had to assume he was. Surprise was not an option.

“Secret Service! Come out now! Hands in the air.” He stepped silently to the side, away from where he shouted the orders.

No response.

Roarke crept closer, cutting an obtuse angle to the stall, hugging the wall where the urinals were. “Now!” he repeated. Once again, he moved away from where he spoke in case Depp aimed there.

He calculated that Depp couldn’t see him. He held his breath and listened for breathing or the shifting of weight on the toilet seat. He waited for thirty seconds and shook his head. Worse than hearing something was the absence of sound itself.

Roarke walked forward, barely sliding his neck around the partition. The door to stall three was only partially open, and at this angle, he could now see that no one was there.

He’d chosen the wrong floor.

At the same moment, a man one floor directly below Roarke adjusted his conservative blue-and-green-striped tie. He looked roughly 55. He pushed a pair of metal frame glasses into place, and ran his hand through his graying hair. He stood over six-feet. Then he let his body collapse into his suit. In that instant, he easily lost two inches. He exited the bathroom, walked to the far end of the hall, and stopped in front of a locked office. He reached in his right front pocket and removed a key, which perfectly fit the lock. He entered and immediately immersed himself in meaningless paperwork, which he’d also left the day before. Everything was as he’d left it in the rented efficiency office suite.

Roarke covered the next five floors as fast as he could. They were empty. By the time he made it up to eight, people were beginning to file in. Now he needed a team to locate Depp.

Reluctantly, he gave up. He walked down the stairs to the first floor and entered the lobby. No guard. No one to question. Roarke departed through the front door, crossed the street, and looked up and down Franklin one last time. He turned back to the building and looked up.

Two women were talking in a window on four. He could see a man on the phone on five. And on three, a businessman in a white shirt and suspenders was pacing with the phone in his hand. He was gesturing with broad movements, as if he was arguing with someone on the other end and looking out into nothingness. “Damn!” was all Roarke could manage.

The man pretending to be on the phone was thinking something entirely different.

SASR Command
Swanbourne, Australia
the same time

“Ten minutes out,” the voice announced calmly. “Target in range.”

JL Ricky Morris looked at his ops screen. “Roger that. You are go. Repeat, you are go.” Morris was the operation’s commander. He was on a live link to the lead pilot of the twin Royal Australian Air Force F/A-18Ds, carrying out the mission objectives. The attack was the work of the SASR, the Special Air Service Regiment. In addition to the real-time displays radioed back to the Swanbourne, Australia HQ, Morris had satellite imagery, courtesy of the Americans.

“Target acquired,” the pilot said with no hint of tension.

“We’re fully committed now,” Morris barely whispered to the man next to him. The prime minister’s defense secretary, Chris Wordlow, nodded acceptance.

The room fell silent as two Lockheed Martin F-35 (JSF) Strike Fighters closed the distance in seconds.

“Warning, attack command received.” This time the voice was from a computer onboard the lead F-35.

Come on, Wordlow mouthed. An SASR Tactical Assault Group (TAG) had located the terrorist base just days earlier. It hadn’t been all that difficult. Once the bomb squad disabled the device discovered in the Sydney hotel, the SASR analyzed the parts. Everything had its own history, and everyone who fused a bomb left a signature of his handiwork. Sometimes it was a fingerprint, other times the wire or solder was a giveaway. It could be serial numbers or the origin of the C-4. In this case, it was a combination of the markings on the explosives and the radio transmitter.

The device was amateurish and familiar, the work of a small insurgent group holed up in the Solomon Islands, northeast of Australia.

The Australian government had been watching the Solomons since the Bali bombings years earlier. Instability in the archipelago made it a natural habitat for terrorists. The Solomon Islands government invited “cooperative intervention.” Prime Minister David Foss willingly agreed. Intelligence determined that, while most of the terrorist cells operated in Indonesia, the 992 islands of the Solomons—some of them very isolated—provided terrorists with the same degree of shelter. Even worse, they were too close to Australia.

That’s where the group was hiding—one of the small islands off Rennell, to be exact. The TAG advance squad confirmed their identity and location, about 300 kilometers south of Guadalcanal. The Royal Air Force was going to do the rest.

“Attack commit,” the monotone computer voice stated.

“We’re going in with AGM-65 Maverick and AGM-88 HARM on the first pass. The knockout punch will come when we drop the GBU-12 Paveway laser-guided bombs,” Ricky Morris said without taking his eyes off the three computer screens.

“Attack target.”

This was Wordlow’s first time witnessing an actual strike and it seemed all too much like a video game. The Strike Fighters were represented by moving triangles. The target was boxed. The missiles, small circles, separated from the planes. As they converged on the box, he shifted his eyes to another screen. There he saw what the missiles saw: live video of the terrorist camp looming closer and closer.

“Seconds now.” Morris pointed to the satellite feed. Barely two seconds later, the circle met the box, the missile-view cameras went black, and the satellite showed massive explosions. The base was obliterated.

“They’ll go in for another run, but it’s over,” Morris stated.

Wordlow leaned back and let out the breath he’d been holding. As many as 100 men, maybe some women, were incinerated in a thousandth of a second. They had no warning, no chance to look to Allah for deliverance. It was the price they paid, he thought without remorse, for planning to blow up the Ville St. George Hotel and the President of the United States.

Jack Evans thought the same thing, watching the attack from his command center in the Pentagon.

The New York Times
editorial offices
New York, New York

“Hey, I got this odd e-mail. It’s short and kinda weird.” Michael O’Connell handed it to his editor at
The New York Times
. “What do you make of it?”

Andrea Weaver read it and quickly dismissed the content. “These unsolicited e-mails are useless.”

O’Connell would normally agree. Internet tips hardly ever amount to much. The correspondence is usually comprised of verbose, argumentative complaints from disgruntled, anonymous readers. This, too, was anonymous, but there was something that piqued O’Connell’s interest.

“No phone number. No contact. No information,” Weaver complained. “Pass.” She returned it to O’Connell.

“That was my first reaction,” he explained. “But check it out again.” He gave it back to her.

She nodded affirmatively. “Bad English.”

“Maybe intentionally bad.”

She re-read the e-mail.

Andrea Weaver had been transferred to the news desk from Moscow only two months earlier. She had limited contact with O’Connell, but she’d been told to give the reporter, who was likely to earn a Pulitzer for his inside reporting of the Lodge investigation, room to work.

“You think this is about Lodge?”

“Yes.”

“There’s nothing that directly indicates that, Michael.”

“There’s nothing that precludes it.”

She read the correspondence a fourth time, then handed it back. “You probably don’t even need my approval on a travel voucher,” she said, acknowledging his star status at the paper.

“I know, but I do need to pick your brain. You’ve been there. I haven’t. Where should I go?”

He could see Andrea Weaver’s whole manner change. He’d worked her and she just realized it. “You are good.”

“Why, thank you,” he said through a laugh.

“Okay, sit down. Let me grab a map and we’ll see what looks most promising.”

Staritsa, Russia

Deep down, Aleksandr Dubroff hoped that nobody cared about him. He hoped that the State had forgotten him. But the very fact that he received pension payments reminded Dubroff that at least one department knew where he was, whether or not they knew who he was. Furthermore, he wasn’t naive. The FSB wouldn’t welcome him speaking to the West. Not with what he knew.

Dubroff’s career was built on secrets, deceptions, outright lies, and murder. He’d trained countless good young men to become merciless killers. He’d transformed medical students—who may have once dreamed of healing people—into torturers who inflicted unimaginable pain. He turned innocent girls into mistresses who would get their bedfellows to admit crimes against the State. And he taught everyone the lesson he believed the most: Trust no one.

While the Western press reported that Russia was transformed under democratization, Dubroff knew otherwise. Nations with no concept of democracy cannot suddenly be democratized. It was the way of Russia. For hundreds of years. He thought it was amazing that the Americans failed to realize that, even after Iraq. People need to be told. People need the State to make their decisions.

And now he was selling out the State—at least, the old regime. He feared the new leadership would not make the distinction.

Dubroff had already taken the first dangerous step. He sent an e-mail to the reporter O’Connell. But would the American be smart enough to act on the invitation? He hoped so.

The New York Times

Your reports fine.

Why do you write about things you not know?

You need information good.

Bearly a friend.

Michael O’Connell analyzed the printout at his desk. There were only four sentences to the e-mail, in obviously poor English. A trick, or a clue to the sender’s identity? He considered each word important and possibly meaningful on multiple levels.

Your reports fine. For more than a year, O’Connell’s beat had been Teddy Lodge. He’d covered the origins of the sleeper spy plot that won Lodge the election and almost put him in the White House. President Taylor had given him complete access to the military mission that garnered the proof. Other news sources quoted him. The author of the note had to be referring to the coverage.

Based on information recovered in the American raid on Libya, O’Connell knew that the plot had been handed off from one Arab country to another, but it originated in Russia. The e-mail is from Russia.

Why do you write about things you not know? This was more puzzling. Is this criticism? An observation from someone who does know? This is what he immediately concluded. Even working with the White House and his ex-CIA sources, O’Connell knew very little, and understood even less. But the person who sent this to me does know.

You need information good. O’Connell got excited every time he read the line. The awkward English syntax aside, he felt this could be an invitation. You need… It sounded like an offer more than a criticism. And …information good. He believed that good meant correct. He believed the writer was indicating he or she had intelligence on the matter, and was interested in offering it up.

The letter was intentionally vague. The reporter reasoned it was written in such a way as to also pass as a complaint if intercepted. It might read that way to someone else, but in Michael O’Connell’s hands, it told another story.

Bearly a friend.

O’Connell saw the connection immediately. The root of the word—bear. This wasn’t about an animal. From his knowledge of the Cold War, “bear” meant only one thing. He was getting an invitation to come to Russia.

Starista, Russia

Dubroff moved cautiously. He smiled to neighbors when he left the house. They see my suitcase. It was a terribly weathered two-suiter. The leather was dry and flakey. “I’m going to visit my wife’s ailing sister,” he told the old woman who sold him eggs and milk.

“Where?” she asked. “You never mentioned…”

See? Everyone is suspicious. The Soviet way.

“In St. Petersburg. She has been failing for a long time,” he added.

Dubroff waved to his butcher, and when the vegetable seller asked when he’d be back with more mushrooms, Dubroff said in a week-and-a-half.

In truth, something he had little experience with, he didn’t know when or if he’d return to Staritsa. He wondered whether the FSB would detain him the moment he tried to board the bus at Tver, or later. Would he feel a cold hand yank him on the shoulder, steps away from his Moscow-bound, not St. Petersburg, train? That’s how he often did it, theatrical and forceful. He simply slipped out of the shadows when his subjects were most focused on blending in, when they were convinced they had succeeded in tricking Mother Russia. That’s when he loved making his arrests. In public, with no equivocation. No sympathy. Everyone would talk about what happened. Few would dare it.

Yet, now Aleksandr Dubroff looked for movement in the shadows. He glanced around to see if someone from the FSB would make an example of him.

Yes, the train. 250 kilometers. That’s when.
It’s such a good time to instruct rookies
, he thought.
No, Moskovia. So many more people to witness my capture. Maybe
, he thought.

The bus door opened and Dubroff climbed the stairs. Then again, giving himself credit, maybe not.

Russia

Aleksandr Dubroff could feel it. He blamed his own stupidity. Too much time on that damned computer.

He didn’t know where they were, but he was certain they were watching. Maybe it wasn’t the man two rows behind him on the bus, or the attendant who stared far too long at his window as they rolled away. Maybe it was someone he hadn’t noticed yet. The farmer in overalls in the aisle opposite him. He looked at the man’s fingers. Rough and dirty? No. He strained to glance over his shoulder. Then what about the woman another row back? She seemed to be reading, but she hadn’t turned a page yet.

Dubroff spent the next two hours sneaking looks and evaluating everyone. He knew he’d be doing the same thing on the train at Tver, assuming he made it that far.

There’s an expression that goes to the very heart of the paranoid: Sometimes they really are following you.

A car pulled up onto the dirt driveway in front of the old Russian’s dacha. Two men in poorly fitting suits stepped out. The driver walked around to the passenger side and motioned to the back of the house. The second man went where he was told.

The driver walked to the front door. His orders were to knock solidly and wait. If, after an appropriate amount of time, the door didn’t open, he was authorized to break in. His supervisors told him that his subject was old. He’d also been warned: “He’s a former colonel in the KGB. The man is resourceful.” He wasn’t informed about his status in the Politburo. No one cared anymore.

When the second knock went unanswered, he unholstered his revolver and put all his might against the wooden door. It gave way, probably needing only half the effort.

“This is the FSB! Show yourself!” There was a noise at the rear of the house. Another door opening. The Russian agent leveled his gun in the direction of the sound.

“In!” called Number Two from the back. Damn. He was supposed to stay and wait! Doesn’t anyone pay attention to training anymore?

The agent worked his way around the first floor. There were old pictures of a beautiful young woman, books on horticulture, an upright piano. He touched a few keys. Instead of recognizable notes, the piano produced discordant tones and thuds. He continued his search. A collection of shot glasses. Dog-eared books of Russian poetry. A box of letters in a woman’s hand. He looked at the postmarks. Nothing newer than the mid-1980s.

The agents converged at the steps leading upstairs. A worn carpet covered the scuffed brown hardwood floors, long in need of a good sanding and stain. The head agent nodded for Number Two to accompany him.

Wony hit the agent. What did they say? Former colonel in the KGB. They weren’t just looking for an old man, they were here to take in a dangerous man.

The agent-in-charge had a printout of the websites Dubroff had logged onto, the length of time he spent on each, and the contents of the webpages. The psych ops shrink, assigned to evaluate Dubroff’s motivation, concluded:

“The behavior of the subject is consistent with one who is absorbed in self-evaluation or end-of-life reflection. The tools of the technology allow him to search for references to his own career; to create meaning for his life’s work, for his existence on the face of the earth. Finding little, yet seeing accounts of colleagues, many of whom he views as lesser, fosters a growing anger. First it is directed at them—people who have achieved fame, perhaps wealth, by violating their allegiance to country. Worse still is when they exploit their achievements at the expense of the subject. But soon this anger transfers to the State. Not only the former Soviet Union, but today’s State. It is the recommendation of this department that the subject be questioned, that his computer be confiscated, that his actions cease.

“While he poses no immediate security risk, his archival knowledge could be embarrassing.”

The report was initialed and dispatched to a bureau supervisor who bucked it up. The name Dubroff, though not instantly recognizable to everyone in the FSB hierarchy, was familiar to a senior control, Yuri Ranchenkov. He was the man who ultimately decided to round up Dubroff.

Ranchenkov recalled a pain-in-the-ass teacher many years ago at the famed Andropov Institute. He made everyone who entered wish they’d never enrolled and turned anyone who graduated into a professional. His name was Dubroff, too. But he still couldn’t be alive?

If he was the same man, he held important secrets. Between his KGB work and his years at the Politburo, he was a walking encyclopedia of every Cold War trick in the book. The shrink’s summation was vastly understated. He called for an assistant to pull all the records on “an Aleksandr Dubroff, retired, Politburo, 1984 or 85. Mid-’80s at least. Ex-KGB field officer and teacher at Andropov.” Then he added for good measure, “Confirm if he is deceased; if so, where he is buried. If he is alive, tell me where he lives!”

They found the information. Dubroff, Aleksandr, was alive. Ranchenkov sent investigators to his home without complaint from subordinates. He had an old-guard sensibility, left over from the Communist regime. He demanded obedience and loyalty. Ranchenkov supervised the secret branch of the DII—the Department of Internal Investigations—the newest version of the Secret Police. In a strange turn of events, he was tracking down his mentor.

After listening for any sound of life in the bedroom and hearing none, the lead FSB agent swung open the door with a simple nudge. Like every other room they checked, it had the musty smell of an old house. This did not make Sergei Ryabov any less cautious. The dossier on Dubroff was impressive. He had been a master spy. That meant he was proficient with a gun.

While both men were relieved the entire house was clear, Dubroff’s absence presented another problem. Where was he?

“He picks mushrooms. He’s probably out in the forest,” said Number Two.

Ryabov had more experience, but only a little. Still, he bullied his partner as if he had years of experience. “And if he is not, then we have wasted hours.”

His Number Two reluctantly nodded.

“Look in his drawers. I’ll check his closets.”

“What am I looking for?”

“What’s there and what’s missing!” exclaimed Ryabov.

The chief officer surveyed Dubroff’s closet. He ran an elimination list. Suitcase. Not here. He looked under the bed, then in the guest room, in the hall closets, and finally in a quarter basement that housed the boiler and hot-water heater. There, he found four bulky, dusty suitcases, stacked one on top of another. The top one had a thick layer of dust on it, but curiously, a rectangle within that was dust free. There had been a fifth, smaller suitcase. He glided his finger across the clean portion of the top suitcase and looked at it. Clean. Dubroff left recently!

Sergei Ryabov shot upstairs and called into FSB headquarters the same moment Aleksandr Dubroff boarded the train.