Masquerade (7 page)

He said, “I want a routine check on OMNI-American Savings & Loan, Nonpareil International Insurance, and an old BCCI account in the name of Samuel Trooper.”

“Am I looking for anything in particular, sir?”

“I want the beginning and end of the Samuel Trooper account at BCCI and any cross-referencing among it, the S&L, and the insurance company.”

The undersecretary hung up, buzzed his redheaded secretary, and told her to interrupt him as soon as an envelope arrived from their intelligence unit. Then he went to work on a pile of special congressional requests, a burdensome but politically necessary task. Sometimes something worthwhile, like an IOU from a grateful congressman, came out of it.

At 11:45
A.M.
, as usual, he left for lunch at his club, where he used the tanning machines to maintain the natural golden color he'd acquired in Cabo San Lucas. He returned to his office at 1:15
P.M.
to face a long list of appointments. As the afternoon wore on, he found himself listening for his secretary's voice over the intercom.

At four o'clock his last appointment left. He'd hoped to be gone by now. Instead he phoned down to public information to send his new inamorata—an eighteen-year-old clerk—on to his Georgetown home ahead of him.

As the hour grew later he comforted himself with the thought
she was there waiting—soft, eager, pretty, and nervous.

Finally at 5:45
P.M.
as the huge old building grew somber with silence, he heard the messenger arrive at his secretary's desk. He signed for the large sealed envelope himself.

Controlling his excitement, he returned to his office, locked his door, and studied the reports and Xeroxes. The information on OMNI-American Savings & Loan and Nonpareil International Insurance was standard—dates formed, board members, chairmen, presidents, CEOs, other top staff, clients, branch locations. Both businesses were owned by the same international corporation, Sterling-O'Keefe Enterprises.

Nothing suspicious.

No Iran-contra money. No mention of the CIA. No cross-referencing.

Hell and damnation.

According to the reports, OMNI-American had saved itself by the surgical selling-off of big real estate developments while attracting solvent new customers. The report explained Nonpareil International had expanded dramatically by buying small money-losing insurance companies and turning them around with sound business practices and floods of new clients. As for the Samuel Trooper account, it was opened in London by an Austrian businessman in 1984 and closed out in October, not November, 1990.

Nothing.

Standard bunk, whitewashed to save somebody's powerful ass.

Fuming, he dialed the head of State intelligence. The son of a bitch had gone for the day. He left a message, demanding a detailed search for the source of the Samuel Trooper account. If the account had originated in Iran-contra money, it was the most direct link to CIA malfeasance, and he intended to have it.

At six o'clock Hughes Bremner was pacing his Langley office. Something was wrong with the bug, and he'd sent it downstairs for the R&D geniuses to fix. It'd been there all day, and so far no one had been able to get to its contents. Which meant he had
suspicions, but no confirmation of why Lucas Maynard had asked to meet Undersecretary Clare Edward that morning.

At last someone knocked. It was a technician, with a lean, worried face.

“Sorry, sir.” The technician started to hand the little recorder to Bremner, then seemed to think better of it. He put it on the big desk. Bremner merely nodded. In the Company, inexpressiveness had been raised to an art form. The technician backed toward the door, seeming to sense the fury that roiled Bremner's gut.

“Tell me what happened.” Bremner's voice was low and cool.

“The recorder used very thin recording tape, sir.”

“Yes. Go on.”

“When it's that thin, it jams easily. Somebody must've left it in the sun or stuck it to something hot—”

“Like a bowl of hot oatmeal?” Bremner asked.

“If it was hot enough, yeah, that'd do it. Anyway, the tape warped and stopped moving. There's no conversation on it. We checked the whole thing to make sure.”

“It never recorded anything?”

“Sorry, sir.”

Bremner turned his back. As soon as he heard the door close, he knotted his fists, leaned over his desk, and swore.

He needed that conversation.

What in hell was Lucas Maynard up to?

Bremner called Sid Williams, the man he'd put in charge of monitoring Maynard's home and office phones.

“Nothing new, sir,” Williams assured him. “Maynard's on the street now. Matt's tailing him.”

“No more of these weekly reports. I want
daily
accounts of whom he talks to, whom he sees, where he goes, and all his phone calls. On my desk. Seven
A.M.
sharp, unless something looks important, and I want that instantly. Anything else going on?”

Sid Williams hesitated.

Hughes Bremner heard it. “What is it?”

“Well, Maynard disappears every once in a while. We think
he still hasn't made us. But it's like he goes into routine anti-surveillance, like he's keeping his hand in. We pick him up three, four hours later at his house or at Langley.”

“Jesus Christ! I want to know what that bastard is up to twenty-four hours a day! Put on extra men.”

“Yessir.”

“Put people on Undersecretary Edward, too. Tails and monitors for his phone calls. Office and home, just like Maynard. The undersecretary and Maynard both, got that?”

“Yessir. No problem.”

“There'd damn well better not be!”

Chapter 7

The next afternoon Undersecretary Clare Edward gloomily considered the fresh batch of papers that had just arrived from intelligence. They described the BCCI account of Samuel Trooper, but they contained nothing useful.

Later, when Lucas Maynard called, Undersecretary Edward told him, “I'm not going to be able to help you, Lucas, my old friend. Can't seem to find what I need to move on this.”

The CIA man's voice was tired. “I told you it wouldn't be easy.”

“Intelligence here claims there's nothing to find.”

“Christ, you'd think they'd figure out how to run their damn computers!”

“They say they've got nothing about your, ah, ‘suggestion' in the data bank. They've searched thoroughly. It's a dead end. You've got to come up with something else.”

“I'll think about it,” Maynard snapped.

The phone went dead in the undersecretary's ear. Maynard's curt irritation said it was an explosive case all right, and he was disgusted he wasn't instantly getting his due. With a smile, the undersecretary hung up. His friend, the CIA man, was hooked. He wanted immunity, and one way or another, no matter how offended he might pretend to be, he'd do what was necessary.

The undersecretary leaned forward, elbows on his antique walnut desk, and raised his fingers in the shape of a temple. He
rested his chin on the tops of his fingers, contemplating the future with genuine pleasure.

He'd heard rumors the Secretary of State was considering retirement. With the kind of positive publicity he could now anticipate, there was no reason he shouldn't be appointed to that illustrious spot.

Unless Lucas Maynard changed his mind. . . .

No, the undersecretary knew Maynard wouldn't have risked revealing so much without evidence. Something had happened to Lucas Maynard, something that had knocked him off his CIA pedestal and brought him back down to the rough, uncertain terrain of ordinary mortals.

At the remote Ranch high in the Rocky Mountains, Liz Sansborough began to have sensations of familiarity, especially about sounds and odors. She described them to herself as near-memories. Each new one fueled a drive deep inside that was making her increasingly restless.

How could she know herself, understand herself, trust herself, if her personal history came only from reports and photographs?

Then one morning she was assigned to design a mock handler/asset operation. She opened her notebook to the Playfair cipher on the first page, and she saw the code word
Hamilton
.

Like a lightning bolt a full name hit her: Hamilton
Walker!

She inhaled sharply. Where did that come from? She probed her mind for clues. She recalled how oddly happy she'd felt looking at “Hamilton” that first day in cipher class. Had she known a Hamilton Walker?

Damn! She needed more information to help her struggling memory. The logical place to start was with herself. Had Langley told her everything? She could ask Gordon—

But he was totally focused on the Carnivore operation. Those were Langley's orders, and he followed orders zealously. And she had to admit—although she didn't believe—her desire to explore her past again might be a sign of the “craziness” about which he'd warned her. What was it about that name, Hamilton Walker?—

Walker! She smiled. Of course. Her cover name back in Santa Barbara had been Sarah Walker, so the two might somehow be connected.

Encouraged, she rushed to finish the mock handler/asset assignment and then used her extra time and new tradecraft skills to design a plan to tap into personnel's computer base.

She told Gordon she wanted extra time on the pistol range. He authorized the ammunition, and when he went on an errand she put one of his camo shirts over her own. While the supply sergeant went for her ammo, she managed to swipe and conceal an infrared flashlight and goggles and a new laser lock picker.

After dinner she and Gordon went to a Ranch motivational lecture. She caught snatches of it as she mentally walked herself once more through her plan.

“ . . . A good case officer must be not only a master spy, but a psychologist and a father or mother confessor as well.”

“. . . In this politically chaotic world, the CIA is the one stable force for freedom.”

“. . . Although you're leaving your old life, you're on the verge of a better one. You can be of real service.”

She felt a stab of guilt. Then pushed it away. What she planned would in no way interfere with capturing the Carnivore.

Liz and Gordon shared a cabin under the pines south of the flag circle. It was a single room with matching iron cots, small closets, pine desks, built-in bureaus, and a bathroom, shower only. It was utilitarian, rustic. Late that night, as Gordon snored on his cot, Liz dressed silently in her camos and gathered her infrared flashlight, infrared goggles, and laser lock picker.

She slipped out into the night, scanned the sleeping camp, then moved swiftly north across the damp grass, from building to building, staying close as she'd been taught. She ran around the flag circle and pressed against the log wall of the officers' club. A sprinkling of lights showed in the billeting cabins behind her. It was nearly 1:00
A.M
.

She dashed across the lawn to the Quonset hut that housed
personnel. She'd have to disarm the sensors and alarm on the door. This could be a problem. If she didn't succeed, the alarm's shriek would be piercing, loud enough to awake even a narcoleptic. She knew; she'd heard it tested.

At personnel's door she rested the lock picker against the keyhole opening to the mortise lock. She pressed a button on the lock picker, and a beam circulated within the lock's core. She held her breath.

Then she heard the soft clicks that told her the tumblers had rearranged themselves.

This was where speed counted. She'd have only fifteen seconds to reach inside and enter a code to turn off the sensors. She and Gordon had each received private codes their first day at camp. If hers didn't work, or if she was one second too slow, the alarm would sound.

She inhaled, twisted the knob, opened the door, slipped her hand inside to the number pad, and tapped in her code.

She waited.

She heard only silence. After a full minute, she allowed herself a brief sense of triumph. She'd succeeded!

She slipped inside the shadowy hut, closed the door, put on the infrared goggles, and turned on the infrared flashlight. She played the gray beam, invisible to anyone without infrared eye gear, around the dusty room. She strode around the visitors' rail, past a row of desks, and through another door into the computer room—an office with file cabinets, desks, and computers.

She removed her goggles, sat, and switched on a computer. When its screen asked, she keyboarded in her code. Once she had clearance, she called up the personnel file of “Elizabeth Alice Sansborough.” In the unearthly glow of the monitor, she scrolled through the now-familiar data. Suddenly she stopped. Sarah Walker was listed as her first cousin, living in Santa Barbara, California.

That made no sense. “Sarah Walker” had been her cover name, assigned when she'd retired and Langley had set her up as a magazine journalist in Santa Barbara.

Why would someone list her cover as her cousin?

She read on, and then she saw it: Hamilton Walker.

According to the file, there was an entire Walker family—Sarah's father, mother, and brother. And the father's name was Hamilton Walker. This had to be more than a coincidence, especially considering all the near-memories she was having. She paused, hoping more information would pop into her mind.

But there was nothing.

Disappointed, she resumed reading. The Walker mother was supposedly her aunt, the sister of Harold Sansborough, Liz's father. But her dossier back in Santa Barbara had said she had no living family. Shouldn't it have mentioned the invented family of her “cousin”? It was damned confusing.

The remaining data was the same as what she'd studied in the Santa Barbara safe house—everything from her birth date, broken little finger, and mole above the right corner of her mouth, to Cambridge and joining the CIA. The file ended three years ago. That was when the Carnivore had almost killed her, when she'd retired and taken the cover name Sarah Walker.