The Art of War: A Novel (6 page)

Zhang thought it delightful, relaxing, to boat up and down the Elizabeth River or along the Chesapeake coastline, or to sit on the end of Willoughby Spit on summer evenings drinking beer and looking at a carrier or two berthed at the navy base while watching and listening to helicopters buzzing about and tactical jets roaring into or out of the base’s airfield, Chambers Field.

Zhang Ping and Choy Lee tended their hooks, kept fresh bait on, watched their bobbers and listened to the jets and choppers. Life that summer was very pleasant, for them both, but Choy was worried. He knew nothing of the bomb, of course. He suspected he had been ordered to nursemaid Zhang because his English skills were nearly nonexistent. Certainly Choy’s control wouldn’t order him home suddenly and leave Zhang stranded in a country where he didn’t speak the language. Yet why was Zhang here? The question gnawed at him.

Of course he told Sally that Zhang was here, a cousin, he said, from the mainland. Here on a tourist visa.

In September the days began to cool. More fronts moved through, morning fog became more frequent, and often the days became windy. On windy days the Elizabeth River and James Estuary became too choppy for Choy’s boat. In October frontal systems with low clouds, copious rain and high winds moved through the area, followed by balmy, beautiful days with lots of sunshine.

Ships came and went. A carrier battle group came in, stayed a week, then went back out.

Zhang Ping became more withdrawn. He was smoking more now, watching the naval base for an hour or so morning and night. He watched the tugs, other harbor craft, fuel barges, became familiar with the rhythm of activities in the naval base, looked for anything out of the ordinary. And didn’t see it.

There was nothing to do but wait. Still, with every passing day the waiting became more difficult.

Choy Lee picked up on Zhang’s mood. He ascribed it to the fact that Zhang was alone in a strange land and could only speak to Choy, and other people with Choy’s help. Cultural shock, Choy thought.

CHAPTER
FOUR

The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his.

—George S. Patton

CIA Director Mario Tomazic liked to spend his free weekends at a cottage on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay, on a waterfront lot beside the wide mouth of a river estuary. He didn’t have many free weekends; he was lucky to get one or two a month, but when he could arrange to get away this was where he came. He found fishing relaxing, and with his little runabout he could motor out and fish and drink beer and sit in the sun and look at the sky and clouds and recharge his batteries for the week ahead. He needed those weekends. Badly. They were especially sweet when his daughter and her kids came; he got a chance to play grandfather and teach the kids how to fish.

On the downside, there was the Friday afternoon traffic eastbound across the Bay Bridge, and Sunday evening it was a very slow go westbound. The Bay Bridge funnel was just something he had to live with, one of those things you can’t do anything about.

If he hadn’t bought this place years ago for a very modest sum when he was a colonel, he wouldn’t buy it now. It was too difficult to get to on those rare free weekends and would be too expensive. His wife had loved the cottage by the water. Loved to birdwatch and do her watercolors, many of which decorated his office at Langley and his condo in town. She had died of cancer some years back. Still, he saw her presence everywhere at the cottage on the shore, the little house with a lawn that ran down to the water’s edge and a small pier where water lapped nervously.

Tomazic was a retired army four-star, a “terrorism” expert according to the press, and that so-called credential and his record in Iraq had gotten him nominated for the CIA job by the president. He hadn’t wanted the job, but when the powers that be wanted him for something important that needed to be done, he didn’t have it in him to refuse. The military does that to you. Regardless of your personal desires, when the boss gives you a task you say “Yes, sir” and do it to the very best of your ability. That attitude becomes ingrained.

He was up at dawn this October Saturday morning. His daughter and the kids were still asleep, and would be for several hours. He’d had had a nice visit with them last night when they arrived, and now they were sleeping late. Tomazic couldn’t have slept past 5
A.M.
if his life depended upon it. Hadn’t done so in forty years.

He drank a cup of coffee and watched the dawn peep through high clouds. A little wind, but not much. He ate a protein bar for breakfast, got his fishing rod and tackle box, then slipped out of the house and pulled the door shut behind him. Walked across the lawn the seventy-five feet to the pier.

God, it was a beautiful morning!

His boat was a sixteen-foot aluminum thing with a tiny outboard motor, one he wouldn’t use this morning. He would just row out into the river a bit and drift down to where it emptied into the bay. That lightly churning water was a good place to find hungry fish.

Mario Tomazic checked the boat out, saw that it had ridden well since he put it in the water and got it ready to go yesterday evening. He loosened up the lines, put his gear on the dock where he could reach it and started to step aboard.

He never made it. The boat shot sideways away from the dock about a foot, to the limits of the ropes holding it. Something grabbed an ankle and he was pulled into the water between the boat and the pier. Tomazic whacked his head on the side of the boat as he fell in.

Woozy, shocked and confused, he found himself being dragged under the water by two strong hands.

Tomazic immediately began struggling. The hands shifted. One was on an arm and the other was on his back, pushing him down. Tomazic twisted, saw a faceplate in the murky water. A scuba diver! His free fist shot out and hit the plate, shattering it.

The hands were ruthless. They spun him and pushed him face-first deeper into the water, almost to the muddy bottom.

He couldn’t breathe! Couldn’t get a grip—couldn’t get free. He struggled with all the strength of a drowning man, which he was, as the panic and terror swept through him … to no avail.

It was all over in less than half a minute. Involuntarily Mario Tomazic tried to breathe, which filled his lungs with water.

When he stopped struggling, the diver held him under another minute, just to make sure, then released the body. He checked his wrist compass, then swam away underwater.

*   *   *

It was four in the afternoon when Jake Grafton joined the deputy director of the CIA, Harley Merritt, two very senior FBI agents, and the chief of the county police on Tomazic’s pier. The driveway was jammed with police and FBI cars, plus a mobile crime lab in a panel truck.

Tomazic’s body was long gone.

“It looks as if he was trying to get into the boat and slipped,” the senior FBI agent said. “Whacked his head on the gunnel there—you can see the blood—and then drowned right between the boat and the pier.”

“A freak accident,” the county mountie said hopefully.

Jake Grafton stood surveying the estuary, the other piers along the shores with their boats, and the houses he could see between the trees. Not even a trace of traffic noise. Some people stood in their yards across the placid brown river looking at the commotion over here. Still, this was a calm, peaceful place this Saturday afternoon. Where death had just visited.

“We’ve interviewed people in all the houses on both sides of this waterway,” one of the FBI men said. “No one saw anything. Had to have happened early, like a little after dawn. The director was obviously going fishing. His pole and tackle box are still here on the pier.”

“Any other boats anchored around here this morning?” Jake asked, still scanning the shorelines.

“Some out in the bay, but they left early. Long before we got here.”

“An accident,” the police chief said, almost like a prayer. He was about seventy pounds overweight and cinched his gunbelt tightly under his gut. The marvel was that the gunbelt stayed in place.

“I want to be damn sure,” Harley Merritt said. “I want any satellite imagery of this place we can find for study. And I want a lockdown on all these houses on both sides of the river until we can interview everyone in each and every house—everyone. The police can help with that. Then I want complete bios done on each and every one of these people. Anyone who has left the area is to be tracked down and interviewed. I want to know who all these people are, why they are here, the whole enchilada. And FBI—”

“We know how to do an investigation, Mr. Merritt.” The FBI senior man was a bit testy.

“I know you do. But this is a national security investigation, not a bank robbery. I want you to seal off this area right here and send down divers. I want them to sift the mud. I want anything and everything there is to be had around here.”

“Jesus Christ!” the police chief said. “I know this guy was a big spook dude, but … Hell, people drown somewhere on the edge of this bay nearly every weekend, some weekends two or three of them. Get tight as ticks and—”

“And I want to keep this out of the press until Monday,” Merritt said. “We’ll make an announcement then.”

“You gotta be shittin’ me!” the local cop said disgustedly. “The ambulance crew has already put the guy’s name on the air. It’s out there, man.”

Merritt seemed to take that with good grace. He did glance at Grafton, who was deadpan.

“Thanks, Chief, for all your help. We’ll need more of it the next few days.”

“If the county has to pay overtime, we’ll send you a bill.”

Even as the chief spoke, a helicopter came in from the west and began slowly orbiting the area where they stood. It had a television station’s call letters on the side of it, and a big human eye.

The junior FBI man put his hand above the police chief’s right elbow and escorted him away.

“What have I forgotten, Jake?” Harley Merritt asked. He was a former college basketball player, about six feet five inches tall, and had hands like dinner plates. He had thought he wanted to be a lawyer, but the agency had recruited him because of his language skills. His management skills and bureaucratic smarts had taken him up the ladder.

“Who found him?” Jake asked.

“His daughter. About nine this morning. She was still in her robe. Saw the boat was still there, came down to the pier and saw his fishing gear, then saw the body floating.”

“Tough.”

Merritt sighed. “The FBI took her and the kids home. They sealed the house and are searching it now.”

He turned to the FBI special agent and spoke with a hint of apology in his voice. “I know you and your agency know how to investigate. I’m merely asking you to pull out all the stops. Do everything you can think of. I know you can’t prove a negative, but if there is anything … anything at all that doesn’t look right, that even hints that the director might have been assassinated, call me. Day or night.” He passed him a card. “My private cell is on there.”

“We should have preliminary results from the autopsy by Monday.”

“Call me, and have a courier deliver a hard copy to me at Langley.”

“Yes, sir.”

Harley Merritt stuck out his hand and the FBI agent shook it. Jake did likewise. Then the two CIA officers strolled away, up the lawn, passing a team of people carrying lights and scuba gear.

“If it wasn’t an accident,” Merritt mused, “and of course it probably was, then it was an inside or an outside job. What foreign power stands to gain something by Tomazic’s demise?”

“Damn if I know.” Jake Grafton was a retired two-star admiral, the current head of Middle Eastern ops for the agency. He was a lean six feet, with a nose a bit too large for his face, a square jaw and gray eyes. His thinning, graying hair was combed straight back. No one had ever called him handsome. Still, he had a presence. His wife thought it was a mix of competence and self-confidence. Whatever, he radiated a calm demeanor that seemingly couldn’t be shaken. That Harley Merritt had called and asked Grafton to come to meet him and the FBI here was testimony to the professional regard Merritt held for him, and Jake knew that.

“I want you to go back to the office,” Merritt told Grafton, “and get all the security codes to Tomazic’s office, desk, files and computer. The computer will have to be examined by the IT guys. You dig into the rest of it.”

Jake knew what Merritt wanted. If Tomazic had been murdered by someone in the CIA, Merritt wanted a trail. A trace. A sniff. Something.

“He was only with the Company about eighteen months,” Jake said.

“I know that. But maybe someone got scared. Frightened people do really stupid things.”

“Anything else?”

“Monday we’ll do a full-blown staff review of everything on our plate. I’ll alert the other department heads and the staff. Have them come in tomorrow and get after it.”

“If someone inside the Company murdered him, then everyone is suspect,” Grafton pointed out. “Did you check where I was at dawn this morning?”

Harley Merritt gave him his frozen stare. “We have to trust people, even in this business. Especially in this business. I trust two, you and me. If it turns out that you’re bent and I’m still above ground, I’ll kill you.”

A trace of a smile played on Jake Grafton’s features. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

In front of the dead man’s house, Harley Merritt got into a bulletproof executive sedan, one trailed by a car containing a driver and two armed guards. Jake Grafton watched the two vehicles thread their way around all the police and FBI vehicles and turn left on the street.

Mario Tomazic normally rode around Washington in a guarded limo, too. But not on his getaway weekends. On those precious escapes he left the guards in Washington and drove his old pickup to the Eastern Shore. And there it sat, right in front of the garage door, getting a preliminary look from two FBI agents. A tow truck was backing down the driveway to hook it up. In Washington the pickup would get the full treatment and give up any secrets it had. If it had any.