Murder at the Opera (22 page)

“That’s interesting,” Pawkins said.

“Cole said he’ll be wanting to talk with you about it.”

“Anytime.”

At approximately the time that Annabel Lee-Smith met with the Opera Ball committee, and Berry and Pawkins conferred, Milton Crowley wearily exited the plane that had brought him from Amman, Jordan, to Washington. He hated flying, especially long trips that crossed time lines, and found airport security procedures to be unnecessarily burdensome and most likely ineffective. Most of all, it was the flights themselves that turned his mood foul, the dispirited flight attendants, uncomfortable seats that seemed deliberately designed to cause discomfort, and what passed for food served in-flight. As he tried to sleep—he was tired, but also wanted to avoid talking with his seatmate, a gregarious woman whose voice was like a cracked bell—he thought of better days in air travel, when he was younger, when flying to exotic lands was a special privilege and people dressed properly for their flights and…

He went through Customs and stood in a line of people waiting for taxis. His turbaned driver drove a vehicle that reeked of stale tobacco and whose rear seat was lumpy and confining; he thought of spacious London cabs and their intelligent, gentlemanly drivers and…

And he thought of his cottage in Dorset, where he would soon retire and flip a bird at the whole bloody world of intelligence, politics, and governments, and the insane men who governed them. Always, it was the vision of the cottage that salved his otherwise cranky disposition.

He handed the driver a slip of paper on which he’d written the address of a building on Ward Circle, closed his eyes, and prayed that the ride would be quick.

It wasn’t.

He was eventually deposited outside a gate and fence. The driver was told to leave. Crowley showed his identification to a military guard, who placed a call. Crowley was allowed to pass through the gate and enter the building. The soldier at the desk reviewed his credentials, and he, too, made a call. A few minutes later, with a visitor’s pass hanging from his neck, he was escorted by a uniformed young woman to a staircase. He had to stop halfway. His right hip had been acting up and a stabbing pain caused him to wince and to let out a small verbal protest. He’d been told he should have the hip replaced, but he wasn’t about to let any surgeon cut into him, thank you very much, unless it became an absolute necessity. It flared up only now and then. Once he was at the cottage, things would be better.

“Sorry,” he told his escort, who stood a few steps above him and looked unhappy at the delay.

She led him to a room at the end of a long corridor. Two armed, uniformed young men stood watch. The female officer said something in a guarded voice, which prompted one of them to open the door. Crowley entered. The room was a rectangle. Large windows had been sealed and painted, the color a slightly different pale green from the walls. A man in a three-piece suit seated at a long table in the center of the room stood and shook Crowley’s hand. “Good trip?” he asked.

Why do people always ask that?
Crowley wondered.

“Yes, quite, thank you, Joseph.”

“Please, sit down,” Joe Browning said, indicating a chair to his left, which Crowley gratefully took, relieving the pressure on his hip. “I appreciate your coming here on such short notice.”

“It seemed necessary,” Crowley said.

“That’s an understatement,” Browning said, underlining it with a chuckle. “So, fill me in. As you can imagine, our people are anxious to be brought up to speed on what you and your colleagues have uncovered in Jordan.”

Crowley cleared his throat and looked to where a window once was. He wished it were still there. The room was claustrophobic. “I’m afraid we’ve gotten only so far,” he said. “I don’t know whether you are aware that our source in Amman was killed.”

Browning nodded.

“Without that source, we’ve reached a bit of a standstill, I’m afraid.”

“Sorry to hear that. Actually, we’ve been receiving intelligence through other sources that helps fill in some of the gaps.”

“That’s good,” Crowley said.

“Interesting, the way terrorists’ minds work, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is, although I prefer to think of their so-called minds as more depraved and immoral than interesting.”

“Of course. What our people found especially probative was this shift in their thinking. What’s your take on it?”

“I’m really not paid to analyze information, Joseph. I simply arrange for it to be gathered. But off the record, I would say that there is a certain wisdom to their new approach. It will certainly be easier to carry out, and the impact could be substantial.”

“If it’s what they’re really intending. Tell me, Mr. Crowley, did your source in Jordan—I understand he had a pretty direct line into the insurgents through a family member—”

“That’s right.”

“Was there any hint as to the sort of high-profile target they might choose?”

“That’s what we were hoping to find out,” Crowley replied. “According to the source, they were in the process of drawing up their hit list. I suppose it had to meet with bin Laden’s approval.”

“If he’s still alive.”

“Yes, if.”

“But it was ascertained that it would be centered here in Washington.”

“That was our information, which we passed along.”

“Yes, and we appreciated that. The secretary made an announcement right after we received that info. We’ve raised the terrorist alert level to Orange-Plus.”

A tiny smile crossed Crowley’s lips.
Americans and their fondness for anything technological, colorful—and useless.
A vision of sitting on a white wrought-iron bench at riverside in Dorset came and went.

“Do you have anything else to report?” Browning asked, opening a file folder on which
TOP SECRET
was stamped in red.

“Only one thing,” Crowley said.

“Which is?”

“I met with the source’s handler in Amman before coming here. He mentioned something about a Canadian connection.”

“Canadian connection? That’s intriguing. What sort of connection?”

“I don’t know, nor did the handler. He hadn’t mentioned it in previous messages. I assume it was simply an oversight.”

“Oversights, like loose lips, can get us killed,” said Browning.

Crowley said nothing. He wanted the meeting to be over.

“Well,” Browning said, “this was a long way for you to come with so little new to offer.”

Criticism or sympathy?

“I wish I had more.”

Browning walked him to the door. “Will you be staying in Washington long?” he asked.

“A day or two. I can be reached through our embassy.”

“I thought you might enjoy taking in a baseball game while you’re here. We have a new team, the Nationals. I know you don’t have baseball in the U.K. and thought it would be a new experience. Have you ever been to a game?”

“No, I haven’t.”
Nor do I have any interest in doing so.

“Give me a call if you’d like to go. They’re playing at home tomorrow night.”

As Crowley headed for his hotel, where he intended to order a bottle of good Scotch and have it and dinner sent to his room, Joe Browning met with his superiors at Homeland Security.

“So he had nothing new to offer,” his boss said.

“Right, except for some vague reference to a Canadian connection.”

“We’ll follow up on that.”

“All we know at this juncture,” said Browning, “is that the terrorists, presumably with bin Laden’s blessing, have decided to forgo hitting big targets and concentrate on assassinating top political leaders here in D.C.”

“Maybe claiming that Washington is the focus is a red herring. Maybe they intend to strike elsewhere.”

“Where else?” Browning said. “If you’re out to kill top political leaders, this is the place to do it.”

“I’ll run it past the secretary. Are you impressed with Crowley?”

“He’s old.”

“I mean, does he seem to know what he and his sources are talking about?”

“I suppose we’ll see,” Browning responded. “Right now, he’s pretty much our only conduit to this new initiative by the terrorists. He still has someone in Amman, who’s working on developing new sources. The original was assassinated.”

“Unfortunate. See me later.”

It had been a long, tough day for M.T., whose undercover code name was “Steamer.” He’d spent the day supervising the installation of boilers in an Amman factory. He was hot and dirty, and wanted a hot shower and a hearty dinner at one of Amman’s fancy restaurants, preferably with a member of the opposite sex. It wasn’t easy making connections with attractive females. He wasn’t the handsomest of men, and his belly—which hung over his belt, no matter how hard he tried to suck it up—was a turnoff, he knew, to many women. Maybe if he could reveal his second, clandestine life, he’d have more appeal.

The problem this night was that he had an appointment to keep, and it wasn’t with a ravishing, dark-eyed Jordanian, or a buxom, redheaded employee of the British Embassy or British companies doing business in Jordan. Tonight’s rendezvous was with an Iraqi he’d begun cultivating as a source to replace Ghaleb Rihnai.

He hadn’t told Crowley about this new potential source of information from inside Iraq, or the terrorist cells that existed in Amman. This Iraqi, whom M.T. had met on one of his boiler installations, professed to suffer shame for the acts of Arab terrorists, and claimed to have contacts within Iraq who were privy to the insurgency’s inner councils. M.T. wasn’t sure whether to pursue the relationship. Rihnai’s brutal murder had shaken him. Maybe it was time to sever ties with Crowley and the others who’d recruited him with the lure of money and an appeal to his innate sense of patriotism and decency.

He left the job site and grabbed a fast bite from a sidewalk vendor before driving out to the appointed meeting place, a deserted, dilapidated barn on an abandoned farm. The Iraqi was there when he arrived. Inside the barn, the smell of decaying wood and fermenting grain was pungent. Steamer suggested going outside, but the Iraqi said he felt more secure inside.

They discussed what M.T. expected of the Iraqi. He wanted to know everything that was discussed by the terrorists, especially their future plans. The Iraqi assured M.T. that he could, and would, deliver.