The Matarese Countdown (15 page)

“I’ll tell you this, Frank. If it were anyone but you, I’d go to the DCI and tell him you were nuts.”

“He’d probably agree with you, but he’d also instruct you to follow my orders.”

“You realize that you’re tainting at least three or four hundred decent people who may not tie their shoes right, don’t you?”

“I can’t help it.”

“It’s dirty, Frank.”

“So are they, and they’re here—
he’s
here or
she’s
here. Someone who’s computer-sophisticated with direct or indirect knowledge of the most secret materials we have—”

“So we’re down to maybe a hundred and fifty people,” the researcher broke in dryly, “if you don’t take the word ‘indirect’ too seriously.… For God’s sake, we started there! There’s not a soul within a hundred feet of the Directorate that we haven’t x-rayed down to the marrow in their bones.”

“Then go a step further, try MRI, because they
are
here.”

The three-man research unit was stymied; among themselves they seriously debated the state of the deputy director’s mental health. They had seen paranoia before and the memories were strong. There was the classic and documented case of J. Edgar Hoover over at the FBI, and later a DCI named Casey, who was in the process of building his own supra-intelligence organization accountable to no one, surely not Langley or the President or Congress. The official records had their share of paranoia, but Frank Shields was not paranoid. The very first night they spent at the estate on Maryland’s Eastern Shore proved it.

Cameron Pryce whipped his head back and forth across the pillow. His eyes suddenly snapped open; he was not sure what had startled him awake. Then it vaguely came to him—there had been a scratch, a scrape, and a brief flash of light. What was it,
where
was it?

The French doors that led to a short balcony? His room was on the second floor of the three-storied mansion, Scofield and Antonia directly above him. And he
had
heard something; the inner screen of his eyes
had
been assaulted
by a flash of light, a reflection perhaps of a boat’s searchlight in the bay … perhaps. And perhaps not, but probably. He stretched his arms over his head, yawning. The large mass of water beyond the windows, the dull glow of moonlight, in the main blocked by cloud cover; it was all too reminiscent of the conditions on Outer Brass 26 barely twenty hours ago.

It was funny in a way, he mused, settling back into the comfort of the pillow. To the normal civilian, the life of a covert-operations officer was a constant display of derring-do, of events in which he displayed skills that permitted him to survive. It was accepted as fact, depicted inaccurately by films, television, and novels. A small part was obviously true: One had to be trained to do the work, especially the distasteful aspects, but such incidents were few and far between, and therefore, when they came, they were moments of extreme stress and anxiety. Of fear.

Someone once said that the object of scuba diving was to stay alive. Cam, an experienced diver, had laughed at the simile until the time that he and his lady of the season had been caught beneath a school of hammerhead sharks off the coast of the Costa Brava.

No, the life of a deep-cover was to avoid such incidents as often as was humanly possible while under orders. And if those orders were produced in the imaginative realm of a source-control who had seen too many films or read too many novels, they were to be disregarded. If the results achieved something vital and the risks were feasible, that was okay. A job was a job, like any other. But, as in any other job, fear of overachievement was a factor, in this case, fear for his life. Cam Pryce was not about to die to advance some analyst’s career.

Another
scratch!
A
scrape
 … outside the windows of the French doors. He was not dreaming, it was there. But
how?
Guards patrolled the grounds, including the lawns and the terraces below; nothing,
no one
, could approach them. Grabbing his flashlight and his automatic, both beside him on the bedcover, Pryce slowly got to his feet and approached the slender twin doors to the short balcony. Silently,
he pulled the left glass-paned panel open and peered outside, first looking down.

Jesus Christ!
He did not need a flashlight to make out the two prone, immobile bodies on the ground, the dark pools of blood still flowing from their necks, necks all but severed from their bodies. For all intents and purposes, they had been beheaded! Pryce switched on his flashlight with the blinding beam, and swung it above him.

A figure in a black latex wet suit had crawled up the smooth stone wall of the mansion, suction cups on his hands and knees. He had reached Scofield’s balcony, and seeing the beam of Pryce’s flashlight, he threw away his right-hand cup, reached into his belt, pulled out an automatic machine pistol, and began firing. Cameron lunged back into the protection of the bedroom wall as a fusillade of bullets soared past, many ricocheting off the balcony’s iron grillwork, spinning off into the room, embedding themselves into the wallpaper. Pryce waited; there was a brief lull. The killer was inserting a fresh magazine into his weapon.
Now
. Cam lurched out onto the balcony and shot repeatedly into the body of the black-encased figure above. In milliseconds he was a corpse, obscenely glued to the wall by the suction cups on his knees and his left hand.

The body was lowered, the remains of the two guards removed to a remote environment. There was no identification found on the killer.

“We’ll press his fingerprints,” said a patrol dressed in Army combat fatigues. “We’ll find out who the son of a bitch is.”

“Don’t bother, young man,” countered Brandon Scofield. “If you’ll check his fingers, you’ll find smooth, bare skin. The flesh has been burned off, probably with acid.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Not for a moment. It’s the way they operate. You pay for the best, you get the best, including untraceability.”

“There are still the teeth—”

“I suspect there are many alterations, as in foreign-made caps and temporary bridges, that are also untraceable. I’m sure the coroner will agree with me.”

“Agree with
you?
Who the hell
are
you?” asked the Army officer.

“Someone you were supposed to protect, Colonel. You didn’t do much of a job, did you?”

“I don’t
understand
, it doesn’t make sense! How did this bastard get through us?”

“Superb training, I suspect. We’re fortunate that Field Officer Pryce, who’s also superbly trained, is a light sleeper. But then that’s part of his training, isn’t it?”

“Ease off, Bray,” said Cameron, walking through the glare of the floodlights to the circle of guards around the corpse. “We were lucky, and that yo-yo wasn’t as well-trained as you think. He made enough noise to wake up a drunken deckhand.”

“Thanks, buddy,” said a grateful colonel softly.

“Forget it,” acknowledged Pryce in like manner. “And your question’s on the mark. How
did
he get past all of you, especially through the marshes, which is the only way he could?”

“We’ve got patrols every twenty feet,” said an Agency guard, “with overlapping beams, thirty lumens apiece, plus circular barbed wire all around the embankment. In my opinion,
no
way.”

“The only other method of entry is the road,” said an Army patrol, a woman in her mid-thirties, dressed in dark jeans and a black leather jacket. Like the others she wore an Army fatigue cap with a brocaded insignia above the visor; wisps of pale hair were evident, pulled back over her temples. “In addition to the electrified main gate,” she continued, “we’ve erected a gatehouse a hundred fifty feet before the main, complete with two armed guards and a steel barrier.”

“What’s on either side?” asked Cameron.

“The most impassable section of the marsh,” she replied. “The road was initially built on compressed landfill
with stratums of concrete and wire to the depth of seven feet. Very much like an airport’s runway.”

“
Stratums?
”

“Strata, if you prefer. Blocks of high-density cement layered to conform to the configuration of the road.”

“I
know
what ‘stratums’—‘strata’ are, Miss … Miss—”

“Lieutenant Colonel Montrose, Mr. Pryce.”

“Oh, you know my name?”

“On a need-to-know basis, sir. Our job is to secure the compound and protect—” The woman abruptly stopped.

“I understand,” said Cameron quickly, defusing the embarrassment.

“Lieutenant Colonel Montrose is my second in command,” the full colonel broke in, somewhat haltingly.

“Of a commando unit?” asked Pryce skeptically.

“Commando tactics are intrinsic to our training, but we’re not commandos,” said the lieutenant colonel, removing her cap and shaking her ash-blond hair. “We’re RDF.”

“Who?”

“Rapid Deployment Force,” answered Scofield. “Even I know that one, youngster.”

“It pleases me you’re so erudite, old,
old
man. Where’s Antonia?”

“She took one of the Agency boys and went hunting.”

“What
for?
” asked Montrose, alarmed.

“Don’t know. My girl’s a pretty independent lady.”

“So am
I
, Mr. Scofield! There can be no individual searches unless accompanied by one of our men!”

“Obviously there can be, Miss—Colonel. My wife studied the grounds very thoroughly. She’s had to do that kind of thing before.”

“I’m aware and appreciative of your backgrounds, sir, but I’m responsible for all personnel escorts.”

“Come on, Colonel,” interrupted Cam, “our Agency fellows may not wear uniforms but they’re pretty damned handy. I know because I’m one of them.”

“Your
machismo
doesn’t interest me, Mr. Pryce. Military escorts are a priority assigned to us.”

“Feisty thing, isn’t she?” mumbled Bray.

“A bitch, if you like, Mr. Scofield. I’ll accept that, too.”

“You said it, lady.”

“That’s enough!” exclaimed Cameron. “We’re supposed to cooperate, not compete, for Christ’s sake.”

“I was merely trying to clarify our specific training and, not incidentally, our firepower.”

“I wouldn’t pursue that, Colonel Montrose,” said Pryce, nodding ever so gently at the bleeding corpse on the ground.

“I
still
don’t understand!” cried the RDF full colonel. “How did he
do
it?”

“Well, son,” said Scofield, “we know he wasn’t afraid of heights, which usually means a person isn’t afraid of depths.”

“What the hell does
that
mean?” asked Pryce.

“I’m not sure, but that’s what a lot of psychologists claim. Someone who skydives generally feels at home underwater. Something to do with the inverse effects of gravity. I read that somewhere.”

“Thanks a bunch, Bray. So what do you suggest?”

“Check the waterfront, maybe?”

“Checked and rechecked and triple-checked constantly,” said Montrose firmly. “It was our first consideration. We not only have patrols lining the area for nearly a thousand yards on both sides of the dock, but laser trip beams inland. No one could penetrate those sectors.”

“And an assassin would assume that, wouldn’t he?” asked Scofield. “I mean kind of naturally.”

“Probably,” agreed the lieutenant colonel.

“Were there any signs of penetration within the past several hours?” pressed Brandon.

“Actually, there were, all negative,” she replied. “Children of neighboring estates camping out on the lawns, several drunks who were turned back after parties, and a couple of fishermen trespassing on private property, again all intercepted.”

“Did you inform the other patrols of the activity?”

“Certainly. We might have needed backups.”

“So concentrations might have been interrupted, isn’t that so? Unintentionally, or perhaps—intentionally.”

“That’s too general a postulation and, frankly, quite impossible.”

“Quite, Colonel Montrose?” said Brandon Scofield. “Not totally.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying, lady, I’m just trying to figure things.”

Suddenly, from beyond the blinding wash of the floodlights, came Antonia’s voice. “We found them, my darling, we
found
them!” The figures of Scofield’s wife and her CIA companion rushed through the diffuse, mist-filled light and ran to the circle of guards. They threw down the objects in their hands: a heavy scuba tank; an underwater, suction-pressed mask; a submersible flashlight, its beam blue; a waterproof walkie-talkie; and a pair of fins. “They were in the mud on the bank of the marsh below the main gate,” said Antonia. “It was the only way he could have gotten inside.”

“How do you
know
that?” demanded Montrose. “How
did
you know?”

“The waterfront was covered, impenetrable. The marshes were patrolled but still open, subject only to diversion.”

“
What?
”

“Exactly like the time Taleniekov told us about, when he was getting out of Sevastopol, right, luv?” Scofield interrupted pleasantly.

“Your memory’s very accurate, my dear.”

“Why ‘my dear’? What did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t think of it. What did Vasili do to pass through the Dardanelles?”

“Diversion, of course. A boat with a false hull designed for detection. The Soviet patrols found it, then went nuts because it was empty!”

“Exactly, Bray. Now, transfer that to land.”

“Of course! Divert the obvious to the remote, then activate the obvious within a matter of seconds!”

“That’s the radio, my darling.”

“
Bravo
, luv!”

“What are you
talking
about?” demanded Lieutenant Colonel Montrose.

“I’d suggest you find out who the drunks were who wandered onto this property,” said Cameron Pryce, “and probably the two fishermen as well.”

“Why?”

“Because one or both or all had hand-held radios frequencied into the one down there on the ground. Beside our intruding corpse.”

Her name was Leslie Montrose, lieutenant colonel, U.S. Army, daughter of a general, graduate of West Point, and underneath that harsh military exterior, a personable woman. Or so thought Cameron, as he, Montrose, and her superior officer, one Colonel Everett Bracket, sat around the kitchen table drinking coffee and analyzing the events of the night. The lieutenant colonel’s background had been supplied by Bracket, who obviously, reluctantly, accepted her as his second in command.