I Am Pilgrim (45 page)

asked.

‘Brodie Wilson,’ I answered.

‘Who’s he?’ Whisperer said. He knew the drill – he wanted to make sure that if sometime very soon

the questioning got really tough, I wouldn’t get confused about my name.

‘A dead guy. He was my stepfather ’s sailing partner. Bill said he was the best spinnaker man he ever saw.’ Suddenly – I couldn’t explain why – I felt a great wave of sadness roll over me.

Whisperer didn’t notice; he was too busy being a case officer. ‘Okay, you were born on Long Island, sailed every weekend, birth-date is the same as yours, next of kin is your widowed mother –

okay?’

I nodded, committing it to memory. The information was for the passport – a dog-eared version with plenty of stamps which would have to be produced by the CIA within the next few hours.

Whisperer was already picking up the phone – conferencing in the family room, kitchen and dining

room – to start organizing it and a host of other details that would transform a fake name into a real identity.

I took the opportunity to think: on the ground in Turkey I would need a conduit, some way of communicating with Whisperer. I couldn’t call him directly – an FBI agent would be of interest to the Turkish version of Echelon, and they would almost certainly be listening to every call. But if I was investigating the link between Dodge’s death and the murder at the Eastside Inn, I could legitimately speak to the New York homicide detective in charge of the case.

My idea was that Ben Bradley could act as our mail box – taking cryptic messages and relaying them between the two of us. As soon as Whisperer was finished on the phone, I explained it to him. He wasn’t sure.

‘What was this guy’s name again?’ he asked.

‘Bradley. Ben Bradley,’ I said.

‘He’s trustworthy?’

Whisperer was somewhere far beyond exhaustion but even his face came alive when I told him about the Twin Towers and what Bradley had done for the guy in the wheelchair. ‘He’s a patriot,’ I said.

‘Sixty-seven floors?’ Whisperer replied. ‘He’s not a patriot, he’s a fucking athlete.’ He picked up the phone and made arrangements for the FBI to go and collect him.

Chapter Eight

BRADLEY WAS ASLEEP when the phone went. Twice he let it go to the answering machine, but when the

apartment’s entry intercom shrilled he felt he had no choice but to answer that. An unknown voice at the front door of the building asked him to pick up his goddamn phone immediately.

With Marcie at his side, Bradley lifted the handset and was told there was a car waiting outside. He was needed downtown at the FBI’s headquarters now. He tried to find out what it was about, but the guy on the other end of the line refused to say.

After pulling on his Industries and a sweatshirt – it was 2 a.m. – he was taken to the same nondescript building I had visited some months before and escorted to the eleventh floor. A night-duty agent showed him into a soundproofed room, empty except for a secure phone line and a chair, and

then left, locking the door behind him. The phone rang, Bradley picked it up and heard my voice at

the other end.

I told him there wasn’t much time, so he had to listen hard. ‘My name’s Brodie Wilson, I’m a special agent with the FBI. Got it?’ I’ll give Ben his due – he took it in his stride.

I said that in a few hours I was heading to Bodrum and gave him a brief rundown on Dodge’s death.

He immediately started asking about a connection to the woman at the Eastside Inn, but I cut him off –

that investigation wasn’t our primary concern. I told him I would be calling him from Turkey and his job was to listen carefully and to relay what I said to a ten-digit number I was about to give him.

‘You must never try to record what I say – not under any circumstances. It’s memory and notes alone,’ I said, more harshly than was necessary, but I was worried. The Turkish version of Echelon

would know if he was using a recording device and that would send up a forest of red flags.

‘You may be asked to send messages back to me. Same deal, okay? Here’s the ten-digit number—’

I was partway through it when he stopped me. ‘That’s wrong,’ he said.

‘No it’s not,’ I replied testily. I was dog-tired too.

‘It can’t be right, Scott – I mean, Brodie – there’s no such area code.’

‘Yes there is.’

‘No, I’m telling you—’ He tried to argue, but I stopped it. ‘It’s an area code, Ben! People just don’t know about it, okay? Nobody does.’

‘Oh,’ he said, and I finished giving the number to him. I didn’t tell him, but he now had the number of the Director of US Intelligence’s high-security cellphone – something known to only five other people, one of whom was the president.

Without knowing it, Ben had joined the big time.

Chapter Nine

WHISPERER HAD BEEN on the phone too. By the time I had finished with Ben he had organized a myriad

other details – everything from an airline ticket and credit cards to the junk that would be found in Brodie Wilson’s pockets.

Foremost among the material that would turn my name into a believable legend was a four-year-

old laptop with plenty of miles under the hood. It would include an email program with hundreds of

old messages, both business and private, as well as documents and downloaded files about past cases.

‘You’re going to have to go through it on the plane and try and familiarize yourself with the crap,’

said Whisperer.

‘Concentrate on the file with your family photos. You’re divorced but you’ve got either two or three kids – I can’t remember exactly what I told them. You can fudge stuff about past investigations, but of course you can’t do that with your family. I said you were devoted to them.’

‘Any of it encrypted?’ I asked.

‘Password-protected and some low-level code but they could bust it pretty quick. If we armour-plated it, I figure that would raise too many weird questions.

‘They’ll also be loading in iTunes and you’ll get an MP3 player. But I’m warning you – the geeks

at the agency have God-awful taste in music.’

‘Thanks – I’ll probably have to become a rap fan,’ I replied. I heard cars crunch along the gravel

driveway and I guessed it was the back-office staff heading out, their work done. ‘When will everything be ready?’ I asked.

‘Six a.m. Your clothes, passport and laptop will be dropped at the security post, and the guard will put it in the kitchen for you.’

We had already organized for me to use his guest bedroom, so it meant I’d get two hours’ sleep before I had to be on the move again. Thank God for adrenaline, I thought.

‘The taxi’s due just before 7 a.m.,’ he continued. ‘I’ve arranged one meeting for you before you get on the plane. The details will be with your stuff.’

His face looked like death, and we both knew there was no way he would be awake before I left.

The only thing remaining was to say goodbye.

He took all our notepads and USB drives, threw them in the fireplace and put a match to it. I’m sure it wasn’t in the manual, in the section about the proper destruction of classified material, but at least the fire gave the room a homey feel and took the chill off our feelings about what lay ahead.

‘I wish I could be there to have your back,’ he said sincerely. ‘Especially when your back’s against the wall. But I won’t be.’

‘Nobody will,’ I replied.

‘You’re right about that – you’re on your own.’

Our eyes met and I expected him to put out his hand to shake and wish me luck, but he didn’t.

‘You’re not like me; you’re not like any agent I’ve ever known, Scott. Your weight is your heart,’

he said.

I thought about that for a moment. My weight was my heart? Nobody had ever said that before, but

there seemed a truth to it.

‘You feel things maybe more than you should,’ he said. ‘There are circumstances in which that could make things very difficult for you.’

He turned and poked the fire. It wasn’t comfortable to hear, but he had a right to say it – he was my case officer.

‘If for some reason it all goes to hell and you’re certain they’re going to work on you, don’t wait

too long – hit the eject button.’

‘Take myself out, you mean?’

He didn’t answer, not directly. ‘Ever get to Afghanistan?’ he wanted to know.

‘No, I didn’t,’ I said.

‘Lucky you. I did a few years in Kabul – twice. The Brits were there a hundred years before us, but

things weren’t much different. They used to have a song they’d sing:

‘When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains
,

And the women come out to cut up what remains
,

Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

And go to your god like a soldier.’

He sort of shrugged, trying not to make too much of it. ‘So yeah, like the English soldiers said –

“roll to your rifle”. There’s no point in suffering, Scott – no point in dragging it out.’

I knew it then, I knew without a doubt, that he had gone down into the archives and read my file.

Chapter Ten

YOU COULDN’T REALLY call it sleep – after a restless few hours lying on the covers in Whisperer ’s guest room, I got up with the first light. I had heard the back door of the house open earlier, so I wasn’t surprised to find the fiction of my new life sitting on the kitchen bench.

I opened the battered suitcase – the Samsonite I had supposedly used for years on both family vacations and work assignments – put the rest of the material inside and went back to the bedroom.

After showering, I looked through the clothes that had been supplied and was pleased to see that most of them had tags from stores in New York. Somebody knew what they were doing. I selected an

outfit that an FBI special agent would wear when travelling to an exotic place. In other words, I dressed like I was going to the office but left off the tie. I checked the leather wallet with its credit cards, slipped it into my jacket and looked at the passport.

At some stage during the previous night Whisperer and I had taken a photograph of myself against

a white wall and he had emailed it to the CIA over in Langley. I looked at the photo now, pasted into the well-used book, and I had to say the techs had done a good job with their nuclear-powered version of Photoshop. The hair was a different style and there were fewer lines around my eyes. It was me,

just five years younger.

I checked my possessions one last time, packed the clothes and toiletries into the Samsonite and turned to the carry-on they had provided. Inside I put my travel documents, passport, laptop and a partly read copy of a book they had given me for the plane. I looked at its cover and smiled.

I guess somebody had thought hard about what an FBI special agent would use to entertain himself

on a long-haul flight and decided that a serious work dealing with the science of investigation would be ideal. It was my book. I have to say I was pleased – not out of vanity, but because it meant I wouldn’t have to wade through a novel on the off chance that some border guard questioned me about

it.

On top of the book I placed the Beretta 9-mil pistol in its holster – standard issue FBI – and the box of ammunition they had provided. It would have to come out first and be shown to airport security,

along with the document in my wallet that gave me authority to carry it ‘in all and every circumstance’.

I closed the door quietly and, wearing another man’s clothes, left the house in the shallow light between dawn and morning. I passed the guard in his security box but he didn’t do anything more than glance in my direction then turn away. The taxi was waiting on the other side of the electronic gates, and I threw my suitcase and carry-on into the back seat and climbed in.

Whisperer had organized for it to take me to my meeting, but I had already decided to change the

arrangements. I told the driver to head to Union Station and drop me at the car-rental offices. I wanted to try out the passport, driver ’s licence, credit cards and anything else I could think of in Brodie Wilson’s wallet. It was better to find out that somebody had screwed up whilst I was in DC than under surveillance at Istanbul airport.

Everything went through, and after a few minutes I had entered the address of my meeting into the

vehicle’s navigation system and was heading into the morning rush.

Forty minutes later I pulled through the gates of a Virginia horse farm, drove down a long drive

and stopped in front of a beautiful farmhouse. Almost immediately a man came out to meet me. In his

early eighties and lonely in his rolling acres – his wife dead for ten years past and the horses long since gone – he was only too happy to spend a couple of hours talking to me about his life’s work.

A Nobel prizewinner, he had once been the world’s leading virologist, part of the team that had long ago planned the eradication of smallpox. He had been told I was an FBI researcher conducting a

threat analysis into biological weapons. The truth was that Whisperer wanted me to have as much knowledge as possible in the hope that some tiny detail, a fragment of information, would prove to be the key at some later date. It was either a very good idea or an index of his desperation – take your pick.

From his library the old guy produced bound volumes of scientific journals and faded notebooks

containing his research notes. While I read through the information he fed me I asked him if anyone