The Last Spymaster (13 page)

The driver pulled to the curb, and a man in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, apparently drinking and partying, abruptly sobered and jumped in next to Ghranditti. The big limo immediately reentered traffic.

Without even the courtesy of a “good evening,” the man demanded, “You have it?” He had a ferret’s face and a restless, unpleasant gaze.

Ghranditti sighed and picked up a backpack from the floor. “Your fifty thousand dollars.”

“You said a hundred thousand!” The man opened it and saw the bundles of bills. “Those sat phones are worth seven and a half million retail!”

Ghranditti smiled coldly. “You were planning to stand on the Mall to sell them?”

“Never again. This is it!” The man shoved his hand deep inside to make certain all were greenbacks.

“For you, there is always a next time,” Ghranditti said knowingly. He tapped the glass that separated him from his driver, and the limo moved to the curb again. The man was a fool; he worked only for money.

“What does anyone want ten thousand cells for?” he complained. “I was almost caught when I set up—”

Ghranditti interrupted, “Being caught could be fatal. Get out.”

The man stared, seeing something in Ghranditti that made him turn away quickly. Gripping his loot, he scrambled from the limo and slammed the door and ran.

Ghranditti grimaced then inhaled his cigar. As he contemplated the baseness of
Homo sapiens,
his cell phone rang. Fortunately, it was Jerry Angelides. Angelides had two qualities Ghranditti prized—a cheerful nature and consistency. Angelides failed so seldom that Ghranditti considered him a platinum-plated member of his permanent staff. Unlike the slob who had just taken fifty thousand for a hundred-thousand-dollar job, Angelides had honest pride in his work.

“Well, I have to hand it to you, Mr. Ghranditti,” Angelides said. “You were right as usual. Good thing you told me to send somebody after that hunter, Elaine Cunningham. She almost got whacked by an operator from that organization you wanted me to keep tabs on.”

Ghranditti swore loudly. “Tell me!”

“The shooter used one of those dart guns. The way I figure it, why bother unless the darts were loaded with poison? But Cunningham did good. She had a gun and a silencer. She whacked the shooter so quiet nobody noticed.”

Enraged, Ghranditti sat up straight. He had been deceived. No one lied to Martin Ghranditti. His big shoulders squared. He did not hesitate. “This is what I want you to do. . . .”

As Washington’s clogged traffic growled around her, Elaine drove the city’s boulevards, angling quickly onto side streets, rounding Logan Circle six times, and cruising over the hopscotch bridge behind the Amtrak station and back again. Several times she managed sudden U-turns. As she dry-cleaned, she continued to try to reach Hannah, with no success.

When she was certain she had no tail, Elaine sped the car to the Dupont area and found a place to park. Troubled that Hannah had not called back, she hurried into the alley, stopped at Whippet’s rear entrance, tapped in her code, and pressed her left thumb on the scanner. The door swung open, and she stepped inside, locked it, and listened. At last she ran lightly upstairs and through the broom closet.

She cracked open the door to the hall and listened again. The silence was profound, somehow even deeper than this morning. Something was wrong. She took out her Walther and pulled the door open wider. A thick draft rolled past, heavy with a raw, metallic stink. She recognized the primal odor immediately—fresh blood.

On high alert, she slipped soundlessly through the doorway and swallowed a gasp. Six men and a woman lay sprawled in the corridor a few feet away. Glazed eyes stared. Red flesh gaped. Blood shimmered in lakes on the floor. It dripped from the walls. The house emanated the hot stench of violent death.

Shocked, she tried to detect any sound, any motion, any sign of life. Were the killers still here? But after a full minute, the hush seemed only to grow heavier. She whipped out her cell and speed-dialed Langley’s emergency number.

As soon as a voice answered, she said quietly, “This is Elaine Cunningham. I’m at one of our secret units. It’s been attacked.” She filled in details and described what she saw.

In cool, rote tones, the CIA officer asked: “Can you leave safely?”

“I believe so.”

“Then get out of there. We’ll have a team at the scene in under ten minutes.”

“Make it faster.”

She hit the OFF button and focused again on the carnage in the corridor. She took three quick steps and hunched beside the closest man and checked for a pulse. There was none. No surprise. He lay on his side, an exit wound in his chest. He had been shot from behind, probably while trying to escape. A bullet had shattered his temple, fired at close range—an execution after the first bullet knocked him down.

She knelt beside the next man, hoping for a pulse. Again, none. She recognized him from an assignment in Paris four years ago. His name was Harry Brillie, and he was regular DO then, or at least presented himself that way. His lean face held an expression of fury and surprise. Wounds bloodied his legs and throat. Blood splatters along the walls showed he had managed to stagger five feet before falling. Where the blood began was where his pistol lay.

Elaine lifted her head, analyzing the stillness. The house felt like a sarcophagus. Despite the orders to leave, she could not make herself. Someone might still have a thread of life, and she wanted to know who in hell had done this. She sped from one person to the next, checking, looking for Hannah’s walnut-colored hair, for Mark’s wire-rimmed glasses. Her fingers grew bloody searching for pulses.
Don’t think,
she told herself.
Don’t
.

Lungs tight, she ran down the hall to two crumpled men and a woman. Blood stained the wainscoting above them. She crouched. They had died where they had fallen. She backtracked and opened an office door. There were two bodies on the floor. They appeared to have been shot while rising from their chairs and turning toward the door. Both still had weapons in their hands.

She checked other offices. All were empty, except Mark Silliphant’s. He was killed while sitting in his chair, a bullet neatly through the back of his skull. His head had crashed forward onto his keyboard. His glasses were crushed into his boyish face.

She returned to the corridor and ran again, still listening while opening more doors, finding more corpses. The attack had been intimate and savage and swift. So far, it was a slaughter.

At the other end of the hall was Hannah’s office. The door was wide-open. Elaine rushed inside, but the room was empty. Hannah was not lying behind the desk. She turned to go, then noticed that the newspaper on the desktop was folded back to display the story and photos chronicling Kristoph Maas’s death. Hannah must have been too eager to wait; she had sent someone for the
Herald Tribune,
too, and she had settled on the same article that Elaine had as the one that would have interested Jay Tice.

Elaine hurried out and across the corridor. She opened the last door—and froze, stunned. Lying on the desk was the woman in the caftan from the park. The woman who had tried to scrub her.

Elaine sprinted, not believing. But there was no doubt—the same straight nose, same round cheeks and chin, same brown hair—and same bloody wound to the belly. What was the corpse doing here? She dropped to her heels before a clutter of items. Someone had swept everything off the desk to make room for the corpse. Her hand went instantly to a framed photo of a man and a girl. She recognized neither. Then to a photo of a woman with the same man and girl. This time she stared. And knew.

She jumped up and felt the corpse’s hair, then ripped it off—a wig. The female janitor was the man in the photos. A Whippet operative. The realization that he was Whippet struck her like a body blow. She swallowed rage. Fought back terror. For some reason, Whippet had tried to wipe her. Now she remembered Hannah’s supposedly innocent question: “Will you drive straight here from Andrews?” This had to be why she had been unable to reach Hannah. What the hell was going on!

And where was Hannah? She raced across the room and again into the hallway, moving swiftly but with an even more concentrated effort at silence. Suddenly, as if from a great distance, she heard the tiny clicks of the front door’s closing, the same as when Hannah shut it after her arrival this morning.

Forcing herself to breathe, Elaine gripped her Walther in both hands and continued cautiously on. If someone had just arrived, they had two
options—stay in the foyer or move into the house. She stared down the corridor, waiting for the person to appear. Beneath her, the old Victorian’s floorboards creaked. She bit back a curse.

At the corner, she raised her Walther. She exhaled then peered around past the fake antiques, past the hidden security—to a body that lay sprawled just inside the front door. She had found Hannah Barculo at last.

And the answer to at least one question—whoever had closed the door had been leaving. Elaine padded to the Whippet chief, who lay on her back, mouth open in surprise, hand gripping her gun. The barrel was still warm. On the opposite wall was a bullet hole. There were three shots to her chest, the black fabric burned from close range. Hannah was dead, but she had fought back and not gone down easily.

Elaine inspected the door. There was no sign it was forced. She looked around quickly. Someone had sent a Whippet team to wipe her in the park. And now more Langley troops were headed here. Their orders could be to liquidate her, too. Sweat drenched her forehead. Her only choice was to get as far away as possible. She had to find out what in hell was going on.

The front door was her closest escape route. Pulse throbbing, she turned out the light and inched open the door. The outside carriage lamp was shattered, glass lying in a spray on the porch. She slid into the darkness, alert for any watchers, and closed her black jacket over her T-shirt, which suddenly seemed glaringly white. Night spread before her, dense and threatening, while traffic cruised the street as if nothing had happened. People strolled the sidewalk, past the lit houses.

She crossed the porch and descended, studying pedestrians. Across the street a small family attracted her attention. Leading was a young couple, the man pushing a baby stroller. Forced by the narrowness of the sidewalk to follow was an older man, smiling fondly at them. An uncle? A grandfather? He wore a slouched cap and thick eyeglasses, and his expression was doting. Most people would never give him a second thought. But her gaze kept returning.

She dropped behind bushes, looking for surveillance. When she saw none, she joined the flow on the sidewalk on the Victorian’s side of the
street, paralleling the anomalous man. There was something about him—not the couple, but him—that held her notice. Then she knew. He was playing a role.

His hands curled at his sides, giving the impression of being relaxed, but the wrists were stationary. His eyes, which appeared kindly, periodically surveyed like a predatory hawk’s. His gait was slow but far from elderly—he rolled off the pads of his feet like a professional runner. As he passed under a streetlamp, she saw clipped gray hair beneath his cap. Noted the furrows that curved down from his nose to his mouth. Stared at the cleft that marked the center of his chin.

Shock jolted her. She could have missed him easily. Should have missed him. He was that good. A grim smile spread across her face. She had found her target at last. The man was Jay Tice.

Georgetown

The ivory table linen shone, and the sterling gleamed. The drinks were generous, and the wine Longoria’s finest. Embassy officials, politicians, and media stars surrounded the long dinner table at the home of a former Secretary of State. The party was one of those swank affairs Laurence Litchfield made a point to attend. As the Deputy Director of Operations, he did quiet public relations whenever possible, and the VIPs sitting in the candlelight were very important members of “the public.”

Known for his incisive intellect, the French ambassador was an athletic man with a receding hairline. “Our Muslim population comes mostly from Morocco and Algeria,” he explained. “A violent sect called Takfir walHijra has been operating religious schools in both countries for years. They steep the kids in doctrine and call in hardened al-Qaeda veterans to train them to kill. This is brilliant planning, of course, because a lot of poor parents send their children to these schools just for the free meals. Then when the budding terrorists grow up, the Takfirs export them to my country.”

“It’s tragic,” added the wife of the British ambassador. “If those young people ever knew what common human values are, they’ve forgotten. You can’t reason with them. They spout memorized rhetoric. They don’t want to talk to you anyway.” One of four Muslims at the table, she was an economics professor at Georgetown and also owned a popular Middle Eastern restaurant. “Nowadays, jihad and immigration to the West go together. The thinking is that jihad can’t be achieved without it.”

For a moment, no one spoke. Immigration laws around the globe had long been used as a vehicle for invasion, but in today’s circumstances it was chilling to remember that. The subject of terrorism had been holding the party in thrall, and Litchfield had listened quietly to the usual complaints that the CIA did little but bumble. He despaired that people were too often and too easily comforted by their shared, if uninformed, misery. In fact, before
leaving Langley tonight, he had gone down to the Global Response Center on the sixth floor. Another two hundred threats had arrived in the past twelve hours. Probably all would prove empty—but each would be checked in detail.