The Mark of the Assassin (6 page)
Elliott walked slowly to the bar and poured another half inch of whiskey into the glass. He went back to the fire and knelt before it, head bowed, eyes closed. He prayed for forgiveness—forgiveness for what he had done and for what he was about to do.
“We are your chosen people,” he murmured. “I am your instrument. Grant me the strength to do your will, and greatness shall be yours.”
Susanna Dayton felt like an idiot. Only in movies did reporters sit in parked cars, drinking coffee from a cup, conducting surveillance like some private investigator. When she left the office an hour earlier, she had not told her editor where she was going. It was just a hunch, and it might lead to nothing. The last thing she wanted her colleagues to know was that she was tailing Mitchell Elliott like a B-movie sleuth.
Rain blurred her view. She flicked a switch on the steering column, and wipers swept away the water. She scrubbed away the moisture on the inside of the windshield with a napkin from the downtown deli where she bought the coffee. The black staff car was still there, engine idling, headlights off. Upstairs, on the second floor of the large house, a single light burned. She sipped the coffee and waited. It was awful, but at least it was hot.
Susanna Dayton had been White House correspondent for the
Washington Post,
the pinnacle of power and prestige in the world of American journalism, but Susanna had loathed the job. She hated filing, every day, essentially the same story that two hundred other reporters filed. She hated being herded around like cattle by the White House press staff, shouting questions at President Beckwith from rope lines at staged and choreographed events. Her writing took on an edge. Vandenberg complained regularly to top management at the
Post.
Finally, her editor offered her a new beat, money and politics. Susanna took it without hesitation.
Washington Post,
the pinnacle of power and prestige in the world of American journalism, but Susanna had loathed the job. She hated filing, every day, essentially the same story that two hundred other reporters filed. She hated being herded around like cattle by the White House press staff, shouting questions at President Beckwith from rope lines at staged and choreographed events. Her writing took on an edge. Vandenberg complained regularly to top management at the
Post.
Finally, her editor offered her a new beat, money and politics. Susanna took it without hesitation.
The new assignment was her salvation. She was to find out which individuals, organizations, and industries were giving money to which candidates and which parties. Did the contributions have an undue effect on policy or legislation? Were the politicians and the givers playing by the rules? Was the money spent properly? Did anyone break the law? Susanna thrived on the work because she loved making the connections. A Harvard-trained lawyer, she was a thorough and cautious reporter. She applied the rules of evidence to virtually every scrap of information she uncovered. Would it be admissible in a court of law? Is it direct testimony or hearsay? Are there names, dates, and places in the story that can be checked out? Is there corroborating testimony? She preferred documents rather than leaks from anonymous sources, because documents can’t change their story.
Susanna Dayton had concluded that the nation’s system of financing its politics amounted to organized bribery and shakedowns, sanctioned by the federal government. There was a thin line separating legal activity from illegal activity. She saw it as her task to catch law-breakers and expose them. Her personality suited her perfectly to the work. She hated people who cheated and got away with it. She despised people who cut in line at the supermarket. She went crazy on the freeway when an aggressive driver cut into her lane. She loathed people who took shortcuts at the expense of others. Her job was to make sure they didn’t get away with it.
Two months earlier, Susanna’s editor had given her a tough assignment: Chronicle the longtime relationship, financial and personal, between President James Beckwith and Mitchell Elliott, the chairman of Alatron Defense Systems. Reporters use a cliché when an individual or a group is elusive and hard to trace: shadowy. If anyone had earned the description of “shadowy,” it was Mitchell Elliott.
He had given millions of dollars to the Republican Party over the years, and a watchdog group had told her that he had tunneled millions more to the party through questionable or downright illegal means. The main beneficiary of Elliott’s generosity was James Beckwith. Elliott had contributed thousands of dollars to Beckwith’s campaigns and political action committees over the years, and he had served as a close confidential adviser. One of Elliott’s former executives, Paul Vandenberg, was the White House chief of staff. Beckwith regularly stayed at Elliott’s vacation homes in Maui and Vail.
Susanna had two primary questions: Had Mitchell Elliott made illegal contributions to James Beckwith and the Republican Party over the years? And did he exercise undue influence over the President?
At this point she had answers to neither question. Her editor wanted to publish the piece two weeks from now in a special section on President Beckwith and his first term. She had a good deal of work to do before it would be ready to go. Even then Susanna knew she could do little more than raise questions about Elliott and his ties to the White House. Mitchell Elliott had covered his tracks well. He was completely inaccessible. The
Post
photo library had just one ten-year-old picture of him, and Alatron Defense Systems didn’t even have a spokesman. When she requested an interview, the man at the other end of the line chuckled mildly and said, “Mr. Elliott does not make it a habit to talk to reporters.”
Post
photo library had just one ten-year-old picture of him, and Alatron Defense Systems didn’t even have a spokesman. When she requested an interview, the man at the other end of the line chuckled mildly and said, “Mr. Elliott does not make it a habit to talk to reporters.”
A source at National Airport told her Elliott had come to Washington earlier that day aboard his private jet. Congress had adjourned, and most members had gone home to campaign. The President had cut short a campaign trip to deal with the downing of Flight 002. Susanna wondered what brought Elliott to town now.
That explained why she was sitting outside his Kalorama mansion in the rain. The front door of the mansion opened and two figures appeared, a tall man holding an umbrella, and a shorter silver-haired man, Mitchell Elliott.
The taller man helped Elliott into the back of the car, then walked around and climbed in the other side. The headlights came on, illuminating the street. The car pulled swiftly away from the curb, heading toward Massachusetts Avenue.
Susanna Dayton started the engine of her small Toyota and followed, keeping to a safe distance. The large black car moved quickly eastward on Massachusetts along Embassy Row. At Dupont Circle it melted into traffic in the outer lane and turned south on Connecticut Avenue.
It was early yet, but Connecticut Avenue was nearly deserted. Susanna noticed that a strange quiet had descended over the city in the forty-eight hours since the jetliner had been shot down. The sidewalks were empty, just a few drunks spilling from a tavern south of the circle and a knot of office workers rushing through the rain into the Farragut North Metro station.
She followed the car across K Street as Connecticut turned to 17th Street. She crossed Pennsylvania Avenue and swept past the ornate, brightly lit facade of the Old Executive Office Building. Susanna thought she knew where Elliott was dining tonight.
The car made a series of left turns and two minutes later stopped at the South Gate of the White House grounds. A uniformed Secret Service agent stepped forward, peered into the back of the sedan, and ordered the driver to proceed.
Susanna Dayton kept driving. She needed a place to wait. Sitting in a parked car for any length of time around the White House was not a good idea these days. The Secret Service had tightened security after a series of attacks on the mansion. She might be approached and questioned. A report might be taken.
She parked on 17th Street. There was a small café across the street from the Old EOB that stayed open late. She grabbed her bag, bulging with newspapers, magazines, and her laptop, and got out. She hurried across the street through the rain and ducked into the café. The place was empty. She ordered a tuna sandwich and a cup of coffee and made a place for herself at a window table while she waited.
She pulled the laptop from her bag, adjusted the screen, and turned on the power. Then she inserted a disk into the floppy drive and opened a file. When it came onto the screen, the file appeared as a meaningless series of letters and characters. Susanna was cautious by nature—many of her colleagues preferred the word “paranoid”—and she used encryption software to protect all her sensitive files. She typed a seven-letter code name, and the file came to life.
The sandwich and coffee arrived. She scrolled down through the file: names, dates, places, amounts. Everything she knew about the elusive Mitchell Elliott and his links to President Beckwith. She added the events of this evening to the file.
Then she shut down the computer and settled in for a long wait.
5
LONDON
The fax arrived in the
Times
newsroom shortly after midnight. It remained on the machine untouched for nearly twenty minutes, until a young assistant bothered to retrieve it. The assistant read it quickly once and took it to the night editor, Niles Ferguson. A thirty-year veteran, Ferguson had seen many faxes like it before—from the IRA, the PLO, Islamic Jihad, and the crazies who simply claim responsibility anytime someone dies violently. This one didn’t look like the work of a lunatic.
Times
newsroom shortly after midnight. It remained on the machine untouched for nearly twenty minutes, until a young assistant bothered to retrieve it. The assistant read it quickly once and took it to the night editor, Niles Ferguson. A thirty-year veteran, Ferguson had seen many faxes like it before—from the IRA, the PLO, Islamic Jihad, and the crazies who simply claim responsibility anytime someone dies violently. This one didn’t look like the work of a lunatic.
Ferguson had a special telephone number for situations like these. He punched it and waited. A woman’s voice answered, pleasant, faintly erotic.
“This is Niles Ferguson, the
Times.
I just received a rather interesting fax in our newsroom. I’m no expert, but it looks authentic. Perhaps you should have a look.”
Times.
I just received a rather interesting fax in our newsroom. I’m no expert, but it looks authentic. Perhaps you should have a look.”
Ferguson made a copy of the fax and kept the original for himself. He personally carried it downstairs to the lobby and waited. Five minutes later the car arrived. A young man with pockmarked skin and a cigarette between his lips came into the lobby and took possession of the fax. Niles Ferguson went back upstairs.
The man with the pockmarked face worked for Britain’s Security Service, better known as MI5, which is responsible for counterintelligence, internal subversion, and counterterrorism within the British Isles. He hand-carried the copy of the fax to MI5’s glass and steel headquarters overlooking the Thames and presented it to the senior duty officer.
The duty officer quickly made two calls. The first was reluctantly placed to his counterpart at the Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, which is responsible for gathering intelligence overseas and therefore considers itself the more glamorous and significant of the two services. The second call was to MI5’s liaison officer at the CIA’s generously staffed London Station, located across town within the U.S. embassy complex at Grosvenor Square.
Within two minutes a copy of the letter was sent to Grosvenor Square by secure fax. Ten minutes later a typist had entered it into the computer system and forwarded it to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The agency’s computer system automatically distributes cables based on key words and classification. The cable from London went to the offices of the director, the deputy directors for intelligence and operations, the executive director, and the duty officer on the Middle East desk. It was also routed directly to the agency’s Counterterrorism Center.
Seconds later it appeared on the computer screen of the officer assigned to the Islamic extremist group called the Sword of Gaza. The officer’s name was Michael Osbourne.
6
CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
Headquarters, Michael Osbourne’s father always said, was the place good field men went to wither and die. His father had been a case officer in the Soviet Directorate. He had recruited and run agents from Moscow to Rome to the Philippines. James Angleton, the famed CIA counterintelligence officer who engaged in a destructive mole hunt for twenty years, ruined his career, the same way he ruined the careers of hundreds of other loyal officers. He spent his final years writing useless assessments and shuffling paper, and he left the Agency bitter and disillusioned. Three years after retirement he died of cancer.
Michael’s return to headquarters was as reluctant as his father’s but brought on by different circumstances. The opposition knew his true name and occupation, and it was no longer safe for him to operate undercover in the field. He accepted his fate rather like a model prisoner takes to a life sentence. Still, he never forgot his father’s admonition about the perils of life at Langley.
They worked together in a single room, known affectionately as the bull pen, on Corridor F of the sixth floor. It looked more like the newsroom of a failing metropolitan daily than the nerve center of the CIA’s counterterrorism operation. There was Alan, a bookish FBI accountant who tracked the secret flow of illicit money through the world’s most discreet and dirty banks. There was Cynthia, a flaxen angel of British birth who knew more about the IRA than anyone else on earth. Her cramped cubicle was hung with brooding photographs of Irish guerrillas, including the boy who blew off her brother’s hand with a pipe bomb. She gazed at them throughout the day, the way a girl might stare at a poster of the latest teen heartthrob.
There was Stephen, alias Eurotrash, whose task was to monitor the various terrorist and nationalist movements of Western Europe. And there was Blaze, a six-foot-four-inch gringo from New Mexico who spoke Spanish, Portuguese, and at least ten Indian dialects. Blaze focused on the guerrillas and terrorists of Central and South America. He dressed like his targets in sandals and loose-fitting Indian garb, despite repeated written warnings from Personnel. He considered himself the modern equivalent of the samurai, a true warrior poet, and he practiced martial arts with Cynthia when the work was slow.
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