Murder in Foggy Bottom (21 page)

He reached the end of the alley, ducked out of it, and looked back. They were in pursuit, big men, lumbering along, yelling things in Russian at one another. Pauling could have revealed himself and opened fire, certainly taking down one or two. Instead, he ran to the corner, dodged traffic as he crossed the wide boulevard to a taxi, whose driver sat smoking a cigarette. Pauling opened the back door, tumbled in, slammed the door, and told the driver in Russian to get moving, fast.

“Nyet,”
the driver said, adding he was on break.

Pauling put the Glock to his head. The driver tossed his cigarette out the window, started the engine, and pulled away. Pauling looked back through the grimy window. The three men were trying to navigate the traffic as they hurried in the taxi’s direction. Pauling yelled at the driver to take a sharp left onto another street. A minute later, he let out a long stream of breath, wiped perspiration from his brow with the back of his hand, and slipped the Glock into his vest pocket.

“Where are we going?” the driver asked over his shoulder, lighting another cigarette.

“Just drive awhile,” Pauling said. “Don’t worry, I’ll pay you.”

They continued in a westerly direction until reaching the beginnings of Moscow’s outskirts, grim, gray buildings lining the street, streetlights dim or not working. The promised rain had started, now just a mist, certainly to become heavier as the night progressed. Pauling considered a number of times instructing the cabbie to let him off at any corner containing a public telephone, but he wasn’t ready to leave the security of the taxi and be out alone on the streets of Moscow. Eventually, after responding to the driver’s question—“You’re a convict?” “No, but I was almost a dead man”—he gave the driver Bill Lerner’s address, in the other direction, in central Moscow. Twenty minutes later they pulled up in front of the four-story apartment building that had been Lerner’s home for sixteen years. Pauling pulled out a wad of rubles and handed them over the seat to the driver, who thanked him profusely. As he watched the taxi pull away and turn a corner, he couldn’t resist a smile. It might have been a traumatic trip for the driver, but it was probably the most lucrative fare he’d have all year. He also had a fleeting, absurd thought as he approached the building entrance that maybe he should have tried to retrieve the money from Glinskaya before bolting the scene. To keep for himself? Or to return to the United States government?

That he was lucky to be alive was more on his mind as he stepped into the foyer. Broken tiles on the floor hadn’t been replaced, and graffiti on the walls was fading; Russian building management at work.

There wasn’t an intercom, so Pauling started up the stairs to the third floor, moving slowly, his hip aching from when he’d flung himself to the sidewalk. He’d realized during the cab ride that a bullet had grazed his cheek, causing a tiny rivulet of blood to drip down onto the shoulder of his jacket. It was now dry, but had started to sting.

He heard a noise from the next level up and stopped, leaned against the wall, and slowly pulled the Glock from his vest. An older man said something in Russian and was answered by an older woman. A door slammed shut. All was quiet again. Pauling continued up the stairs, one slow step at a time, until reaching the small, third-floor landing. Lerner’s flat was one of two, the one to the left. The phone number Pauling had memorized came to mind. It wasn’t Lerner’s phone.

He was about to knock on the apartment door when he heard the phone ring from inside. He brought his ear close to the door and listened, heard a muffled man’s voice say something, then the phone being replaced in its cradle. Had the voice sounded like Lerner’s? He couldn’t be sure. It was too brief.

Pauling knocked. Shuffling inside, someone moving. Pauling realized he still held the Glock 17, slipped it into his pocket, and knocked again. The knob turned, then stopped.

“Bill? It’s Max Pauling.”

The door opened.

“Tom?” Pauling said, face-to-face with his CIA mentor, Tom Hoctor.

“Come in, Max.”

Pauling stepped into the apartment and Hoctor closed the door behind them. The flat was as Pauling remembered it to be, appropriately small—this was Russia— and cluttered. Lerner was an inveterate reader; books were everywhere, covering tables and kitchen countertops, piled on the floor, and overflowing from floor-to-ceiling bookcases on two walls of the living room.

“What are
you
doing here?” Pauling asked.

“Waiting for you,” Hoctor said, going to a window and parting the curtains to look down on the street. “Why didn’t you call the number you were given?” he asked Pauling, who stood in the middle of the living room.

“I had other things on my mind. I was improvising. A few unexpected events.”

Hoctor turned from the window. He looked even smaller and slighter than when Pauling last saw him at Langley. He was dressed in suit and tie; he always seemed to be. Light from a floor lamp created a sheen on his bald pate, and Pauling noticed that his friend’s perpetually drooping right eye was sagging a little lower than usual.

“Did you get the information?” Hoctor asked.

“Yes.” Pauling handed him the envelope Glinskaya had given him. Hoctor opened it and read the note. That an expression of shock crossed his narrow face didn’t surprise Pauling. He’d been shocked, too, when he’d read it.

“Do you believe it, Max?”

“Yes. It’s detailed enough.”

“Information provided by Russia’s less sterling citizens.”

“I trust them as much as I trust the spin doctors in Washington.”

Hoctor placed the envelope in his pocket. “Ready to go?” he asked.

“Where’s Bill?”

Hoctor lowered his head and slowly shook it.

“Something’s happened to him?”

Hoctor nodded toward the small bathroom. “In there.”

Pauling went to the open door. Lying on the floor was Bill Lerner. He was dressed in baggy slacks and a sleeveless summer undershirt. He was barefoot. His eyes were open, rolled back into his head.

“Jesus,” Pauling said, turning to Hoctor, who was again peering through the curtains.

“Obviously a heart attack. He was there when I arrived.”

Pauling knelt next to Lerner’s lifeless body and touched his fingertips to his throat in search of a pulse. There was none. He looked up at Hoctor, who’d come to the door.

“We must go, Max.”

Pauling’s eyes said it all, that he didn’t believe Lerner had died from a natural heart attack. Prussic acid? That was one of its advantages, killing people and making it look like a coronary to less probing medical examiners. Hoctor met his hard stare, right eye sadly lower on the outside corner, chin on his hand, index finger on his lips.

“Let’s go, Max.”

“Was he compromised, Tom?”

A shrug from the small man in the suit.

“Elena? Does she know? Was she—?”

“We make our choices in this world, Max, and live with the consequences. The only choice you have now is to come with me. The plane is waiting.”

“What plane?” Pauling said, getting to his feet.

“Secretary Rock’s plane. She’s a nice lady, but she has no patience for people who are late.”

Part Three

30

That Evening
Blaine, Washington

Zachary Jasper stood with residents of the ranch in the main house’s large kitchen, except for men who’d been posted outside as lookouts. The government forces surrounding the ranch had begun training powerful spotlights on the house for the past thirty-six hours, accompanied by nonstop music blaring from huge speakers mounted on truck beds. Sleep had become impossible. Nerves were frayed, tongues sharp.

They’d said the Pledge of Allegiance, modifying it to read “One Aryan nation under God.” Now Jasper addressed them from in front of the massive stone fireplace. A large flag with a swastika hung above him. He was impassioned, red in the face, hands trembling as he attempted to instill in them the courage to stand up to whatever was in store.

“We are God’s blessed and courageous martyrs,” he yelled, “whose sacrifice will ensure us a permanent place on the right hand of Jesus Christ himself, the white man’s savior and protector. We have right on our side, God’s blessing in our fight against the evil forces out there.”

He scanned the room. Some of the men shouted agreement with what he said, others sat passively. The children’s faces mirrored their confusion and fright, which was to be expected, Jasper reasoned. But it was the women in whom he was most interested. His wife, June, stood proudly next to him, a deer rifle in her hands, hatred written on her face. He noticed that some of the other wives appeared staunch and ready. But not all. Patty, the young woman with the eleven-year-old son who’d recently traveled to the ranch with her husband from Southern California, stood near the door, arms wrapped about herself, lips pursed tight. Her son pressed against her side, abject fear in his eyes. Her husband had been dispatched by Jasper to be one of the armed lookouts.

Jasper directed his next words at mother and son.

“As long as this alien evil occupies our beloved land, hate is our law and revenge our duty.”

Hands went up in the Nazi salute.

“Saint and martyr rule from the tomb of greatness,” he shouted, paraphrasing Blake, then turned to O. Henry: “There is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr’s life!” O. Henry’s irony was missing. He switched back to Blake, reading from a handwritten card: “The bitter groan of the martyr’s woe is an arrow from the Almighty’s bow.”

More salutes and shouts of encouragement. He narrowed his eyes and glared at the young woman by the door.

“We will fight the Jews and blacks who send armed men to our door this night, lay down our lives for that cause we believe in with all our hearts and souls. We have thousands of brothers and sisters across the land who watch us in our moment of truth and who stand ready to take up arms to further our cause. We have been called by Jesus himself to this place and time to take a stand and to let our white brethren know that we are willing to die for white Christian justice.”

Jasper stepped down from his faux pulpit and went from person to person, delivering heavy-handed slaps on backs and kisses on the women’s cheeks. He turned to the frightened newcomer, Patty, but saw only her back as she and her son left the room. Jasper followed and watched as they stumbled down the porch steps and ran in the direction of the main gate, two hundred yards away, she holding his hand and pulling him along behind, falling herself and struggling to her feet. Jasper pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt, pushed ON and barked, “Stop that woman headed for the gate. Stop her, damn it!”

Joe Harris and other special agents stood outside the gate at the forward surveillance post.

“Who’s that?” Harris asked as the woman and her boy came into view, their frantic flight bathed in light from the huge, truck-mounted spots.

“They’re headed for the gate,” an agent said.

Harris and others watched as Patty and her son continued to close the gap between themselves and freedom. He and other agents left the surveillance post and started to run to the gate, where two of Jasper’s armed men watched the mother and son approach. Jasper’s voice crackled from their walkie-talkies: “Stop that woman!”

Mother and son were within fifty feet of the gate when the sentries decided to take action. Ignoring the armed federal force, they stepped into the light with the intention of grabbing the runaways.

“Let them go,” Harris shouted, trying to override the pulsating music from the speakers. “Don’t interfere with—!”

The rifle’s report was lost in the drums and wailing guitars, but its effect was clearly visible. Patty pitched face-first to the ground as the bullet tore into her back, between the shoulder blades, piercing her heart and killing her instantly. Her son fell, too, not from a gunshot but from the pull of his mother’s hand as she collapsed. He got to his knees and looked down at her. As he did, everything suddenly became silent; Harris had ordered the music be killed. The special agent in charge of the siege was now joined by a team of sharpshooters wearing helmets and flak jackets, and brandishing M-249 fully automatic weapons capable of firing more than a thousand rounds a minute.

It took a moment for Joe Harris to realize that the fleeing woman had been shot. “Who fired?” he yelled. No response from anyone within earshot. He immediately turned his attention to the boy, who was now on his feet, obviously in a daze.

“This way, son,” Harris called. To Jasper’s sentries at the gate he said, “Touch that kid and you’re both dead.”

The sentries turned and looked down the barrels of a half-dozen automatic weapons held in firing position by the sharpshooters.

“Come on, son, this way,” Harris shouted, trying to inject compassion and hope into his voice.

The boy looked back at the main house. A dozen people had come from it, shrouded in light as they stopped halfway to the gate. He looked at Harris, who had now come within ten feet of the gate and Jasper’s armed men. “You touch that kid and—”

To Harris’s relief, the sentries lowered their weapons as Patty’s eleven-year-old son ran in his direction, climbed over the gate, and was snatched into the air by two of the marksmen. Everyone slowly backed away from the ranch entrance to the forward surveillance post, where Harris crouched and placed both hands on the boy’s shoulders. “You okay, son?”

“My momma. Is she . . .”

Harris straightened, took the boy’s hand, and led him to the command post in the RV. Once inside, he sat him at a small Formica table and took the chair opposite. “We’ll do everything we can to get your mom out of there,” he said, knowing she was dead but not wanting to acknowledge it until having had a chance to question the boy about conditions inside the ranch: “How many people in there?” “How many men, women, and children?” “Does everybody have a gun?” “Did you see bigger guns, rockets, hand grenades?” “What does Mr. Jasper say about this situation?”

It was the last question that brought this response from the boy: “He says he’s goin’ to kill everybody. My daddy’s in there, too.”

“Okay, son,” Harris said, taking the boy into one of the vehicle’s three bedrooms and assigning an agent to watch him. “Don’t you worry,” he said as he left, “you’ll be all right.”

He returned to the living room, where the communications center had been established. “Get me the director,” he told a tech-support agent. A minute later he was on with Director Templeton in Washington.

“The situation’s changed, sir,” he said hurriedly, and went on to explain what had just happened.

“You’re sure none of our people shot the woman?” Templeton asked.

“Yes, sir.” Harris was confident in his answer, although he’d assigned an agent on his way back with the boy to question everyone at the site.

“Keep this line open,” Templeton said. “I’ll confer with the attorney general and the president; be back to you within the hour.”

“You did what you were told to do,” Zachary Jasper told the man who’d gunned down Patty. With them was her husband, who’d watched the slaying of his wife.

“My boy,” he said.

“He’ll be all right, don’t you worry.” What Jasper didn’t add was that if he’d been the one doing the shooting, he would have killed them both.

“That wife of yours would have told them everything about us,” Jasper said to the husband. “Put us all in harm’s way. We couldn’t have that, could we?”

“No, sir,” the husband replied, looking at the floor and fighting tears.

“Your boy hasn’t been here long enough to tell them much. Didn’t see much, was too busy playing. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, you two keep your eyes open. No tellin’ what this might cause those bastards out there to do.”

He returned to the main house, picked up a phone, and dialed the number of a radio station in Bellingham. The call was answered by a receptionist, who put Jasper through to the news director.

“This is Zachary Jasper, head of the Jasper Project. You know all about what’s going on here at my ranch?”

The news director glanced at a recorder on his desk programmed to automatically tape all incoming and outgoing newsroom calls. The tape was running.

“Of course I know, Mr. Jasper, I’ve had reporters out there since the siege began. Why are you calling?”

“Your reporters tell you about how the FBI just shot and killed the young wife of a loyal, decent, God-fearing man at the ranch?”

“The FBI did? Our reporter just called in, said it appeared that someone at the ranch shot the woman.”

“That figures, doesn’t it? Are you running an independent news organization or one run by Jews in the government’s pocket?”

The news director, Eli Cohen, withheld the reply he was tempted to make, asking instead, “Can you verify that it was the FBI who did the shooting, Mr. Jasper?”

“You’ve got my word on it. What the hell do you think, I’d be stupid enough to kill one of my own?”

“I’ll follow up on this, Mr. Jasper. Give me a number I can reach you at.”

“I’ll call you.”

Jasper hung up.

Thinking that it was a shame that the bigoted Jasper hadn’t been the one killed, the news director contacted his on-the-scene reporter and told her what Jasper had said. “Try to get a statement from the FBI, Mindy. Maybe Jasper’s right. Keep on it.”

FBI Director Templeton got back to Joe Harris in twenty minutes.

“The attorney general and the president have given the okay, Joe, to advance the schedule. Tell that bastard Jasper he and his people have six hours to come out peacefully. If they don’t, use all necessary force to end this thing. We can’t stand by while this madman kills innocent women and children. Tell him to send out all the women and children and we’ll give him and his men more time. If he refuses, move!”