Murder in the CIA (26 page)

He said nothing, stared instead at the marina far below. Then he slowly turned his head and said, “It was no gasoline leak, Collette. Somebody wired the yacht. Somebody planted explosives on a timer.”

She took a few steps back until her bare calves touched a metal chair. She collapsed into it. He continued looking out over the harbor, his hands on the terrace railing, his body hunched over. Finally, he turned and leaned against the rail. “You damn near lost your life because of things you don’t know, and I’m going to tell you about them, Collette.”

As much as she wanted to hear what he had to say, she was gripped with a simultaneous, overwhelming wave of nausea and shaking, and her head had begun to pound. She stood and used the arm of the chair for support. “I have to lie down, Eric. I don’t feel well. Can we talk later?”

“Sure. Go rest. Whenever you feel up to it we’ll sit down and hash out what happened.”

She gratefully climbed into bed and fell into a troubled sleep.

When she awoke, she was facing the window. It was dark outside. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. The tree frogs were performing their usual symphony. They provided the only sound.

She looked toward the door, which was open a crack. “Eric?” she said in a voice that could be heard by no one. “Eric,” she said louder. No response.

She’d slept in what she’d been wearing that day, removing only her shoes. She placed her bare feet on the cool tile floor, stood, and tried to shake away her lingering sleepiness and the chill that had turned her flesh into a pattern of tiny bumps. She said it again: “Eric?”

She opened the door and stepped into the hallway. A light from the living room spilled over to where she stood. She followed it, crossed the living room, and went to the open terrace doors. No one. Nothing.

She was met with the same situation when opening the
front door. The Mercedes and motorcycle were there, but no sign of their owner.

She went to the car and looked inside, then walked to the side of the house where a large tree created a natural roof above a white, wrought-iron love seat.

“Sleep good?”

A burst of air came from her mouth. She turned and saw Eric standing behind the tree.

“All rested?” he asked as he approached her.

“Yes, I … I didn’t know where you’d gone.”

“Nowhere. Just enjoying the evening.”

“Yes, it’s … lovely. What time is it?”

“Nine. Feel like some dinner?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I’ll put it out anyway, nothing fancy, a couple of steaks, local vegetables. A half hour okay?”

“Yes, that will be fine, thank you.”

A half hour later she joined him on the terrace. Two plates held their dinner. A bottle of Médoc had been opened, and two delicately curved red wineglasses stood on the table.

“Go ahead, eat,” he said.

“Funny, but I am hungry now,” she said. “Some people eat when they’re upset, others can’t bear the thought of it. I was always an eater.”

“Good.”

She asked how his arm felt, and he said it was better. “A bad sprain,” the doctor at the clinic had said. Edwards had been told to keep it in the sling the doctor had provided, but he’d discarded it the minute they left the clinic. There was a large compression bandage on his left temple. A spot of dried blood that hadn’t washed off remained on his cheek.

Cahill pushed her plate away, sat back, and said, “You said you wanted to share something with me. Sorry I wasn’t in any shape to listen before, but I’m ready now. Do you still want to tell me?”

He leaned forward, both forearms on the table, took a breath and looked down into his plate, as though debating what to say.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

He shook his head. “No, I want to. You almost lost your
life because of me. I think that deserves an explanation.”

Cahill thought: Barrie Mayer. Had
she
lost her life because of him?

He repositioned his chair so that there was room for him to cross his legs and to face her. She adopted a similar posture, her hands in her lap, her eyes trained on his.

“I really don’t know where to begin.” A smile. “At the beginning. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

She nodded.

“I suppose the best way to get into this, Collette, is to tell you that I’m not what I appear to be. Yes, I have a yacht-chartering service here in the BVI, but that’s a front.” She told herself to offer nothing, take in what he had to say and make decisions later.

He continued. “I work for the Central Intelligence Agency.”

It struck her that he was being completely honest, that he had no idea that she knew about his involvement. Obviously, Barrie hadn’t told him what her close friend Collette did for a living. That realization was refreshing. On the other hand, it put Cahill in a position of being the dishonest one. It made her squirm.

Her turn to say something. “That’s … interesting, Eric. You’re an … agent?”

“I suppose you could call it that. I’m paid to keep my eyes and ears open down here.”

Cahill took a moment to appear as if she were looking for the next question. In fact, she had a list of a dozen. She said, “The CIA has people everywhere in the world, doesn’t it?” She didn’t want appear too naive. After all, he knew she had once worked for the CIA. She certainly would be somewhat knowledgeable about how things worked.

“It’s more than just having people plopped in places around the globe to report back on what’s going on. I was sent down here for a specific purpose. Remember the island I pointed out to you, the one the Russians have taken over?”

“Yes.”

When he didn’t say anything else, she leaned forward. “Do you think the Russians blew up the yacht?”

“That would be the logical explanation, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose it’s possible, considering you’re an agent for the other side. But you don’t seem convinced.”

Edwards shrugged, poured more wine into each of their glasses, held his up in a toast. “Here’s to wild speculation.”

She picked up her glass and returned the gesture. “What wild speculation?”

“I hope you don’t misunderstand why I would say something like I’m about to say. I mean, after all, we both work for the United States government.”

“Eric, I’m not a recent college graduate having her first taste of bureaucracy.”

He nodded. “Yeah, well, here goes. I think the CIA set the charge aboard the yacht, or arranged for someone to do it.”

It hadn’t occurred to her for a moment since the incident that the people
she
worked for would do such a thing. She’d thought of the Russians, of course, and also wondered whether it hadn’t been the act of a competing yacht-chartering company. She’d also had to question whether anyone else
had
been involved at all. There was no more evidence to link the explosion to a plot than there was to rule out a natural cause.

But those thoughts had little value at the moment. She asked the only obvious question: “Why do you think that?”

“I think it because … because I know things that the CIA would prefer not be told to anyone else.”

“What things?”

“Things about individuals whose motivations are not in the best interests of not only the Central Intelligence Agency but the United States as well. In fact …”

Collette’s body tensed. She was sure he was about to say something about Barrie Mayer’s death.

He didn’t disappoint her. “I’m convinced, Collette, that Barrie was murdered because she knew those same damaging things.” He pulled his head back a little and raised his eyebrows. “Yes, she knew them from me. I suppose that’s why I’m talking to you this way. Being responsible for the death of one person is bad enough. Seeing a second person come this close”—he created a narrow gap between his thumb and index finger—“to losing her life is too much.”

Cahill leaned back and looked up into a sky that had, like her mind, clouded over. Her brain was short-circuited with thoughts and emotions. She got up and went to the edge of the terrace, looked down on the harbor and dock. What he was saying made a great deal of sense. It represented the sort of thing her instincts had pointed to from the beginning.

A new thought struck her. Maybe he was wrong. Assuming that the explosion had been the result of someone’s having planted a device on board, who was to say the intended victim hadn’t been herself? She turned to him again. “Are you suggesting that someone from the CIA murdered Barrie?”

“Yes.”

“What about Dave Hubler, her associate at the literary agency?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know anything about that, unless Barrie gave him the same information she’d gotten from me.”

Collette returned to her chair, took a sip of wine, and said, “Maybe I was to be the victim.”

“Why you?”

“Well, I …” She’d almost stepped over the line she’d drawn for herself in terms of how much she would reveal to him. She decided to stay on her side. “I don’t know, you were the one who toasted ‘wild speculation.’ Maybe somebody wanted to kill me instead of you. Maybe the engine just blew up by itself.”

“No, nothing blew up by itself, Collette. While you were sleeping, the authorities were here questioning me. They’re filing a report that the destruction of the yacht resulted from an accidental electrical discharge into a fuel tank because that’s what I want them to think. No, I know better. It was deliberate.”

Cahill was almost afraid to ask the next question but knew she had to. “What was it that Barrie learned from you that caused her death, and that prompted somebody to try to kill you?”

He gave forth a throaty laugh, as though saying to himself, “My God, I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Collette felt for him. Obviously, the event near Mosquito Island, and Barrie’s
death, had brought him to a level of candor that every bit of his training cautioned against; in fact, prohibited. Her training, too, for that matter. She touched his knee. “Eric, what was it that Barrie knew? It’s terribly important for me to know. As you said, I came this close to losing my life.”

Edwards closed his eyes and puffed out his cheeks. When he exhaled through his lips and opened his eyes again, he said, “There are people within the CIA whose only interest is their own
self
-interest. Ever hear of Project Bluebird?”

Back to that again. Jason Tolker. Was that what he was getting at? She said, “Yes, I’ve heard of it, and
MK
-
ULTRA
, too.” The minute she’d said it, she knew she’d offered too much.

His surprised look indicated she was right.

“How do you know about those projects?” he asked.

“I remember them from my training days with the CIA, before I quit and went to work for the embassy.”

“That’s right, they did talk about such projects in training, didn’t they? You know, then, that they involved experimentation on a lot of innocent people?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know the details of it, just that those projects had been operative and were abandoned because of public and congressional pressure.”

Edwards narrowed his eyes. “Do you know how Barrie got involved with the CIA?”

Collette did a fast mental shuffle. Should she acknowledge knowing about Mayer’s life as a courier? She decided to continue playing the surprised role.

“Did Barrie ever mention someone named Tolker?”

Cahill raised her eyes as if thinking back, then said, “No, I don’t think so.”

“He’s a psychiatrist in Washington. He was the one who recruited her.”

“Really?”

“You didn’t know that? She never told you any of this?”

“No, I don’t remember anyone named Tolker.”

“How much did she tell you about what she was doing for the CIA?”

Her laugh was forced. “Not much. It certainly wouldn’t have been professional for her to tell me, would it?”

Edwards shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t, but Barrie wasn’t necessarily the most professional of intelligence couriers.” He seemed to be waiting for Cahill to respond. When she didn’t, he said, “I suppose it doesn’t matter what she told you. The fact is that she’d been seeing this guy Tolker professionally. She was a patient of his. He used that opportunity to bring her into the fold.”

“That isn’t so unusual, is it?” Cahill asked.

“I suppose not, although I really don’t know a hell of a lot about that end of the business. The point is, Collette, that Dr. Jason Tolker was deeply involved in Operation Bluebird and
MK
-
ULTRA
—and continues to be involved in experimentation programs that spun out of those projects.”

“The CIA is still doing mind-control experimentation?”

“Sure as hell is, and Tolker is one of the top dogs. He manipulated Barrie, brought her into the CIA as a courier, and that’s why she’s dead today. More wine?”

It seemed an absurd thing to say considering the tenor of the conversation, but she said, “Yes, please.” He poured.

Collette thought about what she’d read in the book by G. H. Estabrooks, about how people could be persuaded to do things against their will if the hypnotist changed the visual scenario. Was that what Edwards was suggesting, that Barrie had been seduced into the role of CIA courier against her will? She asked him.

“Barrie evidently was an unusual hypnotic subject,” Edwards answered, “but that really isn’t important. What
is
important is that when she left on her most recent trip to Budapest, she carried with her information that would hang Jason Tolker by his thumbnails.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Tolker is a double agent.” He said it flatly and matter-of-factly. It left Cahill stunned. She got up and crossed the terrace.

“He’s a goddamn traitor, Collette, and Barrie knew it.”

“How did she know it? Did you tell her?”

Edwards shook his head. “No, she told me.”

“How did
she
learn he was a double agent?”

He shrugged. “I really don’t know, Collette. I pumped her, but all she’d say was that she had the goods and was
going to blow him out of the water.” He grinned. “That’s an apt way to put it considering our little snorkeling excursion today, huh?”

Her smile was equally rueful. She asked the next obvious question. Who was Barrie going to tell about what she knew of Tolker’s supposedly traitorous acts?